


All Our Yesterdays

by boxparade



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: DADT Repeal, Established Relationship, Family, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Heartbreak, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage, Military, Soldiers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:37:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He leaves the door open a crack because Emily's only four and the dark scares her more than real life, more than uncertainty, more than the evening news reporting lists of dead soldiers overseas.</p><p>(The one where Spencer is a Marine deployed to Afghanistan, and Brendon is the military husband trying to be a good father, even when the world starts crashing down around him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Our Yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this in a dining hall during my lunch break, I honestly thought it was going to be maybe a couple pages long—handwritten. Obviously, I was wrong, and someone fed my bunny growth hormones.
> 
> There are a few links within this story that will take you to other websites containing material that I used as inspiration. Clicking them is entirely up to you, and will not in any way affect your ability to understand the story. I personally find links within a story to be a distraction, but some people like having visuals, and I wanted to give credit where credit was due.
> 
> A/N: Please keep in mind that the opinions of the characters are not always the opinions of the author. However you may interpret the perspectives of the characters in this story, I have the utmost respect for the men and women who serve, and I wish our troops still abroad a safe return home.
> 
>  
> 
> — – - [CODAS](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15540) \- – —
> 
>  
> 
> .

 

“Two kisses, Papa.”

Brendon looks down into two wide, bright blue eyes peeking out over the covers with little pink butterflies on them. He smiles, pats her hair, and says “That’s right, pumpkin. Two kisses. Silly of me to forget.” He leans down, places another kiss on her little forehead, and clicks off the light before backing out the door. He leaves it open a crack because she’s only four and the dark scares her more than real life, more than uncertainty, more than the evening news reporting lists of dead soldiers overseas.

He checks on Jake, careful with the door in case he’s out, but he’s still up, working his way through one of the “big kid books” he’d made Brendon buy for him. His tongue is caught between his teeth in concentration, and Brendon smiles because he knows that look. He walks over to pick up the book out of his son’s hands to protests, but then settles down on the bed next to Jake. It’s the Velveteen Rabbit, and Brendon would laugh and claim his son was really born of Ryan Ross, with his old books and his obsession with scarves. Jake is “seven whole years old, Papa” and he can definitely read it by himself, so he says, but Brendon shushes him and says “Maybe I want to read it, too.”

Jack ponders this for a moment, nods seriously, and says “Okay. Just this once.”

Brendon agrees and starts in where Jake had last been, giving slowly so Jake could try to follow along if he wanted. He tried, but by the time Brendon flipped the page, he was drifting and in a few more sentences, he was out.

Brendon slid out from under his son with practiced grace, tucked him more firmly into bed, and flipped the lights off. He closed the door because Jake wasn’t afraid of anything at seven, and Brendon wished he had that peace of mind. When he crawled into his half of the bed, the sheets were cold, and he closed his eyes before he could look at the other side of the bed, still and freezing. Tomorrow was a Saturday. Saturdays were always the hardest.

Brendon will be okay.

 

* * *

 

He wakes to the thump of small, socked feet against the floor, and moments later there are two figures bouncing onto the bed and shrieking, trying to wrestle deft fingers under the covers and find that one spot on Brendon that’s still ticklish as hell. Brendon yells, laughs with them, fights against it in a gentle was so as to not hurt his spawn, as evil as they might be.

“Okay, okay! Truce! Uncle! You win!” After a few more fiendish tickles his children subside and he smiles and fights his way out of the mess of blankets, kisses both of them with a loud _MWAH_ , and says “Who wants pancakes?” They both yell in joy, and Jake’s chanting “Choco chip, choco chip!” as he hurdles down the stairs, followed by a slightly slower but no less eager Emily, yelling incomprehensibly simply because she wants to be like Jake.

Brendon takes a moment to actually wake up, blinking harder than he needs to and trying to condense his thoughts into something manageable. He’s had so many dreams about the same damn thing, over and over, that he’s never quite sure what’s real life and what’s reality. It’s getting to be pretty bad. He’d talk to a psychologist about it, except Brendon doesn’t have the motivation to seek out a shrink on his own. Instead he muddles through his waking hours, always wondering if he’s still dreaming every time the news works its way around to Iraq. He needs one of those tokens they had in Inception.

Pancakes with the kids prove as a nice distraction, but it doesn’t really do much when he’s still got the tiny TV in the kitchen on and muted, blinking furiously at him every time he stops paying attention for more than a moment. If anyone knew he did this, watched the news like he’s addicted to it, Brendon’s pretty sure they’d send for professional help. He finds that with each passing day, he cares a little less. If anyone ever asks, he has an arsenal of random facts to prove to them that yes, indeed, it is entirely necessary for him to watch CNN at every possible moment.

Jake is in the middle of some story about his dream about bunnies, and Emily is listening intently and asking him questions about it. Brendon’s not really paying much attention. He’d feel bad about it, except he’s fairly sure today is one of those days where he goes through his entire life like a robot on autopilot. He’d feel bad about that, too, if he weren’t so fucking dead inside.

Brendon sighs, tamps down his emo and makes sure the kids are both done eating before snatching away their plates and asking “Who wants to sit at the computer today?”

It’s a mad dash for the computer then, tiny hands whacking and clawing to see whose can reach the keyboard first, but one sharp “Hey, no hitting!” from Brendon calms them down a little, and Jake is sitting proudly in front of the computer with his hands all poised to peck out letters. Emily pouts and keeps poking at Jake’s arm, but she stopped being unreasonable a few weeks ago when Brendon explained that when she was old enough to know how to spell words out, Brendon would let her type lots more than Jake to make up for all the time she’s missed.

He didn’t mention how he hoped, by then, there’d be no reason to type out emails every Saturday.

Brendon kisses Emily’s temple as he pulls up a chair behind Jake and opens up the email for them. Jake knows how it works now, months of practice, and Brendon pretends that thought doesn’t make him a little sick. Jake starts typing without asking for help.

 

_deer daddy, today i had pancak with choko chip and they were gud. school is lots of fun but emily dont no cuz she is to little. but one day we go to school together ew! papa says hi and emily to. dilan says woof cuz hes a dog. i mis you. papa says your comming home soon so get here qwik, ok? i will save you sum pancak!_

_love, jake (o and emily to)_

 

“Issit good, Papa?” Jake asks, pleading eyes and bright smile and Brendon just nods and watches as Jake gets up and starts to tell Emily everything he wrote, because he’s still ecstatic that he knows how to do things like write now, and Emily always looks at him with wide eyes and wonder. They’re both off to watch Saturday morning cartoons until Brendon calls them over to let them make sure he sent it, just because they need that kind of reassurance.

He sits down in the office chair himself, still a little warm from Jake’s tiny, vibrating body, and starts typing out his own message underneath his son’s.

 

_Hey hun,_

_I know you hate it when I call you that, but I figure I can get away with it because there’s an ocean or two in between us and that’s a damn long way to go just to whack me upside the head. Ha. (I really wish that were funnier.) Anyway, Emily wanted me to add that she made a paper snowflake for you in pre-school. I’ve seen it, it’s pretty badass. It has stickers and purple glitter that never comes out of the carpeting. The vacuum caught on fire some time last week. I fear you may not have a house to come back to when they let you go, seeing as our children are evil masterminds. It’s only a matter of time now…_

_Things around here have been exactly what you’d expect, a lot of rushing and forgetfulness and completely unnecessary screaming and whatnot. The usual. Wish you were here. (Seriously, I need a break from the epic death matches over which cartoons they watch. The shrieking is going to shatter the windows.)_

_Work’s been pretty exciting, though I doubt it’s the same kind of excitement you get over there (or the kind you hopefully don’t get.) Pete’s gotten this idea into his head that we should all be fucking superheroes and bang out album reviews to print the day after they’re released. There aren’t actually enough hours in the day for that. He’s a week away from being severely disappointed._

_I’m taking the kids to your mom’s later today, it’s been awhile since we’ve seen them and she keeps promising to teach Emily how to use the cookie cutters to make the Christmas cookies into pretty shapes. Never mind that it’s not December for another month or two or five._

_Ryan stumbled in, mumbled a bunch of incoherent phrases that pretty much amounted to telling you that he says hi, and stumbled back out. I’m pretty sure his latest novel is actually the one that’s going to kill him. I haven’t understood a thing he’s said in months, and the only reason he remembers to eat is because his editor, Greta, is a god._

_I’m not going to tell you how much I miss you, and wish you were home, and kind of really need you a lot more than we both thought I would, because I tell you that every damn email I send so I’m pretty sure you know. If you even get any of these. I haven’t heard back in over a month, so I don’t know if you haven’t had time or…_

_Whatever. I’m sure you’re probably too busy shooting bad guys to find a computer. It’s okay. (I mean it.) Just shoot them before they shoot you, yeah?_

_Love you,_

_B._

 

Brendon shakes himself a little, always disoriented after disappearing into his head while he writes, and then he calls the kids over so he can position the mouse over “send” and let Emily click it. After the email’s sent, on its own headed for hell knows where anymore, he lets the kids go back to cartoons for an hour while he straightens up a bit and tries to work through the latest stack of mail. He keeps telling himself that any mail from the military is not a reason for his heart to actually stop in his chest, because if something happened, they wouldn’t tell him about it through the fucking mail.

Actually, they wouldn’t tell him about it at all. Even after DADT was repealed, Brendon still wanted to play it safe and stay off the forms for a bit. He doesn’t know what the fuck he was thinking, now.

When Brendon hustles the kids into brushing their teeth and getting dressed and settling into the car, it’s an hour past when he promised Ginger he’d show up at, but by now that’s so customary that he doesn’t know why he bothers trying. Ginger doesn’t really seem to care though, not when she’s busy with an armful of Jake and Emily to keep her distracted. Brendon grins a little sheepishly as Jake and Emily pounce, and hangs back, watching his breath curl in front of his face. It’s ridiculously cold for early October in Nevada.

“—really, Brendon, every time I see you, thinner and thinner. Thank goodness you feed your kids a bit more than you feed yourself! If you’d just let me cook for you more oft—”

“I’m fine, Ginger,” Brendon says affectionately and rolls his eyes as Ginger pulls him in for a weight-check disguised as a hug. She’s probably going to cook something ridiculous and greasy for dinner.

“When are you gonna start calling me Mom?” Ginger pulls back and clucks her tongue. Brendon resists the urge to roll his eyes; Ginger’s kind of an old-fashioned lady, and she doesn’t much like rudeness.

“I’ve already got a Mom.” Never mind the fact that he hasn’t spoken to her in a few years. He doesn’t mention that. He also doesn’t mention that the only reason he calls her Ginger instead of Mrs. Smith is because Spencer begged him to appease her at least a bit, because she was driving him crazy with her incessant ranting. Calling her Ginger seemed to help.

“Yes, yes, as you keep saying,” Ginger mutters and ushers them all inside, the kids already running amok all over the house. It almost seems like she’s going to say more on the subject, like maybe today will be one of those days Brendon has to explain, again, how someone’s parents could pretend they don’t exist because of _one tiny little technicality, really._ Brendon’s stopped standing up for them a long time ago, mostly just lets Ginger rant on until she realizes it’s Brendon’s parents she’s talking about. And it makes Brendon’s eyes look sad.

Brendon’s just too tired to deal with it today, though. He’s glad she seems to let it go this time.

It took awhile for Brendon to be okay with coming over here himself, comfortable enough to help himself to a Ginger Ale in the fridge or change the channel on the television if no one else is watching. There was a point, a few months after Spencer left, that the kids had been upstairs asleep and Brendon had been staring at the wall for the last fifteen minutes. Joseph noticed something was off, placed a hand on his shoulder, and suddenly Brendon was bawling right there in the middle of the living room. And Ginger, god bless her, hadn’t even blinked, just sat down next to him and pulled him into her arms and stroked his hair while he mumbled embarrassing things. He can’t remember what he said, now. He just remembers how warm it felt, squished in between Ginger and Joseph and finally understanding that they really were his family.

After you have a break down in front of someone, it’s kind of hard to be uncomfortable with normal, everyday things.

It seems like Emily and Jake sucked Grandpa Joe into a game of Candyland, and Ginger long ago disappeared into the kitchen, so Brendon surreptitiously makes his way upstairs. It’s lame, and sappy, but Ginger and Joseph never say anything, so Brendon doesn’t stop. He likes to spend a little time in Spencer’s old room, when he comes over, and it looks just like it did when he was a teenager. Before Spencer was shipped out, when they’d visit, he’d always blush and get embarrassed by almost everything about the room, from the lame band posters on the walls to the old pictures of him wearing girl jeans and a bright pink unicorn shirt.

By now, Brendon’s learned the contours of every trinket and the picture in every frame, but he still looks. But it’s the bed, made and clean every time, that always draws him in, in the end. He collapses face down and breathes into the pillow, imagining for a moment that it still smells like Spencer. It doesn’t; it probably hasn’t smelled like him for years and years, but Ginger still uses the same old detergent, and Brendon recognizes it enough that it’s _almost,_ almost.

He’s fallen asleep in here more than once, only to be woken by Joseph’s gentle hand on his shoulder, or Ginger’s sad, sympathetic eyes. It’s okay; she told Brendon she sleeps in here sometimes, when she feels fragile. Brendon thinks it’s sweet.

He doesn’t drift off this time, even though he’s almost constantly exhausted. He just breathes until the air coming from the pillow is hot and stale, and he rolls himself over and looks up at the ceiling. It’s got an old band poster on the ceiling, some ridiculous emo band that Ryan was into for awhile, ergo, Spencer was also into it.

Brendon thinks his favorite thing about this room is that there isn’t a trace of anything military in it. It’s not like he doesn’t support the military, or what Spencer’s doing over there, and despite the fact that his family thought the government should be more like the Church, he was raised a patriot. But sometimes, Brendon hates them with every ounce of his being, and he likes to remember Spencer before the military. When he let his hair grow long and was still a little round in the middle. When he rolled over to face Brendon in the middle of the night, pinned him with honest eyes, and said _I want to have kids._

Not just _I want a kid,_ no. _Kids,_ plural, because Spencer was always someone who knew what he wanted and went after it. He still is.

Brendon’s been having trouble remembering present tense, lately. Jon assures him that’s normal, especially after two years. It still makes Brendon queasy.

He pushes himself off the bed and rockets straight out of the room before he spends the rest of the time moping. Besides, the kids are beating Grandpa’s behind at Candyland by now, and Ginger will want his help in the kitchen, at some point. Brendon’s almost positive that Spencer got his love of cooking from her, it’s like she never leaves the kitchen. She seems perfectly content with that, too.

He’s assaulted by four tiny hands before he can get there though, accompanied by high-pitched whines about coming to play _the awesome game with cars and little people, papa._ It turns out to be Life, and Brendon laughs and cocks an eyebrow at Joseph, who just shrugs and starts setting up. Emily and Jake are a bit too young to understand what half the squares on this game board are talking about, but they like the wheel thing in the middle and Jake thinks the cars are the coolest things ever.

Ginger shouts from the kitchen that she’s fine without a helper for a little while, so Brendon settles in, and already Emily has decided to start halfway to the finish mark. “But it’s the _purple square,_ papa! I wanna be on the _purple square._ ” And Joseph has always been a sucker for Emily’s doe eyes, and Brendon can’t honestly say he’s much better, so they let her. Besides, she ends up hopping the car all over the board so she can add the little people to her car, and for once, Jake isn’t getting all mad at her for it.

At some point, Jake wants little people in his car, too, so he moves it to one of the _You get hitched!_ squares and adds a little pink piece next to his blue one. Brendon’s too busy laughing about the weird wording this game decided to use to notice that Emily adds in a second car for herself so one can be all-girls and the other can be all-boys. Joseph and Brendon keep trying to play by the rules, though at this point they’re pretty much shot. Jake’s about three minutes from running off to play with his Tonka truck, and Emily’s looking like it’s about time for her nap.

Brendon spins the little rainbow thing in the middle and lands a six, which puts him right on one of the marriage squares (Joseph’s car had long since passed all those squares, and Brendon’s already made a joke about him being a forever-bachelor, spending his days in Bunny Palace. _I wanna go to a bunny palace!_ Emily, shrieks, and Brendon cracks up.)

He picks out a little blue peg from the container on the side and tucks it in right next to his own little blue, armless stick-figure dude. Joseph smiles at him, a little sad, and that’s when Jake decides this game is dumb and wanders off to do something else. Brendon rolls his eyes affectionately.

“I think it’s about time a little missy took her nap,” Brendon says, standing, and Emily whines, but she’s too tired to protest.

“Let me,” Joseph says to Brendon, then starts talking about caterpillars as he herds Emily upstairs. Brendon sighs and, in a moment he still can’t really justify to himself, grabs the little car with the two blue pegs, and pockets it. Then he goes to help Ginger in the kitchen, where half his job will be to “taste test” the soup, except take a lot more than just a spoonful, because _Really, soup changes flavor so much with each sip, you need a good handful to get it right._

 _Right, Ginger, of course,_ Brendon wants to say, but he’s feeling small today so he figures he might as well indulge her.

 

* * *

 

The sun is low in the sky, painting everything warm and yellow, and Brendon is in the Study, trying to get some reviews done for Pete. Grandpa Joe had recruited Jake and Emily to play _Save the princess from the evil dragon_ , except Emily was set on being the Prince, and Jake wanted to be the dragon. Brendon’s pretty sure Grandpa Joe has been momentarily cast as Princess Josephine, complete with a pink, sparkly party hat and everything. Ginger took pictures.

But while his kids are otherwise occupied, he’s trying to get some work done. He wants to sleep in the next morning, though he vaguely knows already it’s never going to happen. It never does.

He’s ensconced in his head, tapping out what he remembers from the beat of the beginning of the album he’s supposed to be reviewing, when Grandpa Joe comes in. The pink, sparkly hat is long gone, and his face is drawn in something between terror and worry, and instantly, Brendon knows something is wrong. He bolts upright, asks “What is it?” but Joseph doesn’t answer. His lips are tight and he shakes his head, glancing down at a wide-eyed Jake, clinging to his pant leg, and Emily behind him, playing with tiny figurines.

Right. Not with the kids around. Joseph jerks his head back toward the foyer, and Brendon takes off, glad that at least one person in this family is going to be able to take care of the kids when the world comes crashing down in the next few minutes.

He skids down the front hall and already, he can see the door thrown wide open, Ginger standing on the porch with her knuckles white, fingers clenched around the railing.

There’s a military car on the driveway.

Brendon’s heart stops beating for a few seconds. By sheer force of will, he makes it out onto the porch next to Ginger and clutches an arm tight around her shoulders. He’s not sure if either of them can stand on their own right now. Two uniformed men step out of the car and start walking up the drive, and Brendon stops breathing.

By the time they reach the porch, Ginger’s got silent tears running down her cheeks.

“Ma’am,” the eldest of the two says, and nods his head at Ginger. “Are you Mrs. Smith?”

Ginger nods weakly and clutches a hand at the hem of Brendon’s shirt. The air outside is freezing and Brendon’s wearing a T-shirt and no coat, but he doesn’t feel it. He honestly thought, until this moment, that was something that only happened in shoddy writing.

The moment before the man says anything else stretches out between them, dragging on for eras and years, sucking all the air out of the world and leaving nothing but empty space. Brendon doesn’t remember what gravity feels like, or what his name is, or the sound a heartbeat makes. He echoes.

“I’m here to report that Second Lieutenant Spencer James Smith was carrying out a mission with his platoon into enemy territory when we lost contact with the group. We received intel that the target area was bombed. In the two weeks since we lost contact, we’ve heard nothing from the soldiers in the platoon, and they, along with your son, ma’am, have been officially declared MIA, pending KIA.”

There’s one second—one single, solitary second that stretches on and on, into infinity, where nothing exists. It’s the lone second it takes for what was said to make its way through the pathways of his brain, and Brendon’s pretty sure it’s the last second he has to breathe before his world ends and he suffocates.

Ginger breaks down next to him. It takes at least ten seconds for Brendon to remember what living feels like, or how to move, and when he finally remembers to breathe again, it ends up as a sob. He fumbles with his hands until he’s wrapping his arms around Ginger, holding on to anything he can find. It feels like someone just ripped his chest open and tore everything out. He can’t fucking _breathe,_ he can hardly even think beyond the loop of static buzz in his mind.

Ginger’s sobbing into his shoulder, and he’s sobbing into her hair, and the military officers are standing there, respectfully bowing their heads, saying something about keeping them updated but that…that they don’t expect there to be any changes. Brendon doesn’t care. It doesn’t fucking matter, nothing matters, and he just wants these fucking guys _gone,_ out of his life, somewhere else. He never wants to see another damn military uniform as long as he lives. He wants the sky to fall and the ground to split open and the buildings to crumble and he wants the fucking world to end.

He’s gasping for air when Joseph appears in the doorway, face set in stone, and his two kids hovering behind each of his legs, timid and unsure because their father and their grandmother are crying on the front porch. The car is pulling out of the driveway. Brendon doesn’t remember when they turned to leave.

“Papa?” Emily’s tiny voice comes out muffled against Joseph’s pant leg, and Brendon’s heart fucking _breaks._ His little girl is standing there, confused and probably scared, and Brendon doesn’t know—he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know how to do this, how to tell them that Spencer— Spencer.

“Emmy,” Joseph says softly, starts to herd them back inside, but Brendon pulls himself away and kneels down in the doorway. Joseph backs up and Brendon puts his hand on Emily’s tiny shoulder, his other on her cheek, pressing soft, tiny curls against her head.

“Hi, honey,” Brendon says, and tries not to sound completely wrecked. He doesn’t recognize his own voice. “Baby,” he repeats, softer, and then pulls Emily to him, holding on tighter than he normally would. His fingers are shaking as he tries to rub gently down her back, cradling the back of her head and pressing his face into her hair. It smells like lavender. “It’s okay, Em, it’s gonna be okay,” he says.

And it fucking hurts. It hurts to say things he doesn’t even believe himself to her, because he knows he’s going to have to break her later, watch tears too big for her streak down her cheeks, and he rattles in breath after breath. He doesn’t know how he’s doing it.

Next to him, Ginger has managed to gather up Jake and her husband all at once, and he can hear the way her voice is wearing thin, even as she speaks platitudes into her husband’s shoulder. Brendon doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t even think his heart is beating. He just keeps telling Emily that it’s okay. That nothing is wrong. The lie is bitter on his tongue but he doesn’t know what to _do._

He feels Emily start to get squirmy, knows she’s probably bored with all this hugging and doesn’t quite understand that it means anything more than what it is. Brendon keeps holding on, keeps her close, until he can’t anymore, he doesn’t want to upset her, she needs to…to be herself. She needs to keep on being Emily, and keep playing Prince charming, because he swears to hell and back that Emily and Jake being themselves is what threads the sky together, makes it stay above them, unfailing and blue, always.

He loosens his grip and then Emily scrunches up her tiny nose, tells Brendon he’s weird, and promptly grabs Jake by the hand to drag him up to the master bedroom so they can go explore the closets and the chest of drawers and try on old clothing that’s so big on them, they disappear.

Jake is old enough to get that something is wrong, but he still goes willingly, if a little hesitantly, throwing a look back at Brendon and his grandparents, still standing (or in Brendon’s case, kneeling) in the front hall. For now, he’ll chalk it up to all of them being weird. Brendon’s okay with that. The world would be a better place if the worst thing his son ever had to deal with was weird relatives.

The second they’re out of sight, Brendon kind of whites out. He knows, somewhere, in the small part of himself that’s still conscious, that he winds up moving. A little. Mostly, he just lulls to the side until he’s pressed against the wall, and then his feet are under him and moving and he doesn’t even—nothing registers. It’s like his head had suddenly been thrown into a static bubble, hearing filled with bells and eyesight distorted and unclear. He wonders if this is what shell shock must feel like, the ringing and the brightness of everything and the dizzying sense that you’re about to topple right over, and with you goes the ground and the sky and the world.

He wonders if Spencer ever experienced shell shock—the real kind—and then he’s pretty sure he’s in the kitchen and he’s throwing up in the sink. How did he get to the kitchen? His feet weren’t even…are they even there? He doesn’t—there’s no way he’s moving if he can’t feel his limbs. His mind is still floating somewhere, out on the porch, watching the two men approach, still clinging to that bare, stripped thread of hope that maybe… Maybe.

Vaguely, he thinks Ginger and Joseph are around. At least, Joseph is. There’s a strong hand on his back, pushing him forward, guiding him through a world filled with too much light and too much noise and too much goddamn pain.

And then, like he just appeared there from thin air, everything materializes around him like the world hadn’t existed moments ago, with his eyes closed. Like everything is just now here, just now coming into being, as if nothing had happened yet. Nothing at all. He’s in a room somewhere, and there are strong hands guiding him down onto soft fabric, a dislocated voice telling him to lay down, take some time but.

But there’s no time left. There is no—Brendon can’t—nothing _exists._ Nothing exists yet, it’s the beginning of everything and it just…there couldn’t be time if time isn’t here, it doesn’t—did Spencer have time? He had time, he had time with Brendon but it wasn’t…it didn’t. There wasn’t enough. Time had run out and stuttered to stop about five minutes ago, and now it just…nothing. Clocks fading into the white that took over Brendon’s vision.

He doesn’t want to sleep. He can’t sleep. He can’t do _anything,_ he can’t _be_ anyone, and just…his eyes close, and his mind shuts down, and he curls into himself and then there’s just nothing.

Nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

When Brendon blinks his eyes open, he’s not quite sure he’s awake. But he keeps blinking, and then slowly, tiny bits of moonlight light up shapes in the room, and he realizes it’s night. He doesn’t really know where he is, and to be honest, he’s not quite sure of how much he remembers after—

After.

He jackknifes off the bed, mostly due to some fear he can’t pinpoint and a strong sense of guilt that he fell asleep in the first place. His feet are unsteady when he puts weight on them, and his knee cramps up, but he hops over to the light switch and suddenly his eyes are burning, so he shuts them and blinks, wide and exaggerated, until he can see again. He’s in the guest room at the Smith’s house.

There’s a moment where he’s not quite sure _when_ he is, whether this is a dream or a past memory or actual reality, but then, a minute later, he’s hit with the terror that is waking up without knowing exactly where your kids are, not even having realized he had kids until his brain clicked on. He sort of freaks out, a little bit, runs down the hallway and pulls open doors with much too little grace, but there.

Right there. Asleep in the room that used to be the twins’, two beds on either side, with tiny, snuffling lumps under the covers that he recognizes as Jake and Emily. He sighs, sure it’s the first time he’s taken a breath since he woke, and pads back to the guest room. The kids are safe, they’re okay, and he’s…

He’s still breathing. That’s about all he can manage, at the moment, but it’s something.

He lies down for about two minutes before he realizes that he’s never going to get back to sleep, and he grabs the throw from the foot of the bed and wraps it around himself, padding through the dark, silent house and into the kitchen. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for—food, probably, because he hasn’t eaten since Before—but he doesn’t know if he can keep anything down right now. His stomach growls at him angrily, but he still feels dizzy and nauseous, so he stares into the fridge for what feels like a few hours and then closes it with a hopeless sigh.

“Can’t sleep?” a voice says out of the darkness, and Brendon yelps and jumps back and clutches at his chest, his heart rate skyrocketing.

“Jesus,” he breathes, squinting through the dark at the kitchen island, where the nightlight across the room just barely outlines Ginger, a blanket around her own shoulders. “You scared the living daylights out of me.”

“Sorry,” Ginger says quietly, solemnly, and Brendon sort of deflates when he realizes he doesn’t have to pretend. Not around Ginger, not anymore. All this time, he’s been the good husband, pretending he doesn’t miss Spencer, pretending he doesn’t worry. Now…well, there’s really no point, is there?

“You can’t sleep either?” He asks, even though it’s an obvious question, and settles himself down in the chair across from her.

She shakes her head and flashes a weak, sad smile at Brendon. “Never could, back when he’d just shipped off.” Her voice sounds so small, and Brendon wraps the blanket around his shoulders a little tighter, settling down. “When it was warm, I’d go out on the porch and stare at the stars for hours. It never really helped,” she says the last part like a secret, whispered out in confidence, and Brendon takes it and holds it close to his chest.

“Yeah,” he croaks out, thinking of all the birthday candle wishes, the lucky charms that started holding a lot more weight when he had so much more to lose. They never really helped, either.

Silence falls heavy and sad between them, everything dark and soundless. Then Ginger gets up, startling the both of them with the scrape of the chair, and she grimaces an apology before she toddles to the counter. Brendon turns, curious, and watches as she stretches up to get two mismatched mugs down from the cabinet, using her other hand to keep the blanket firmly secured around her shoulders.

He watches in silence as she maneuvers about, pulling out a milk jug from the fridge and filling the mugs. She places them in the microwave, hardly making a sound, and there’s a single, solitary beep before the electronic hum starts up and the two mugs spin and spin around each other. The light from the microwave casts the kitchen in an eerie glow, and Brendon fights down a cold shiver in his spine and tries to get a read on Ginger in the dim lighting.

Really, there’s no point. They’re both messes, and they know it. Ginger’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since that car appeared on the driveway, and Brendon is so emotionally crippled that he hasn’t been able to think beyond the basic functions of human life and parenting, and even then, he’s struggling.

They say it gets easier with time. He can’t imagine that such a great, heavy pain like this would ever go away, and just the thought of it softening, growing familiar and worn in the pit of his stomach, makes him sick. It’s probably not too healthy, wishing beyond all reason that he hurts this much forever, but it’s all he has to console himself right now.

Ginger pulls open the microwave before it beeps, turning and handing Brendon the first mug. He accepts it with a quiet murmur of “Thanks,” and holds it close to himself, curling over it and blowing across the smooth surface to cool it. Ginger grabs the other mug and retakes her place across from Brendon, and they both blow on their mugs and then take tentative sips.

“My mother and I used to do this,” Ginger says softly, and this time, when she speaks, it seems natural, not startling either of them. She waves the mug around gently, swirling the warm milk around and staring down into it. “Whenever we couldn’t sleep, even when I was a teenager and I was convinced my mother was Satan incarnate.”

Brendon smiles at that, and even though it’s weak, it stretches the muscles in his face he wasn’t sure existed anymore.

“Spencer and I too,” she continues softly after a moment, and hearing his name feels like a pin in his heart, a tight, concentrated pain. She takes another sip from her mug, a deep crease between her eyebrows, and continues. Brendon pretends he doesn’t notice the way her voice breaks over the first word. “Whenever we couldn’t sleep, for whatever reason, we’d come sit in the kitchen, and I’d make mugs of warm milk, and we’d sit here until we felt a little more human.”

Brendon nods. He doesn’t pretend to know more than he does, because this is a family thing, but he knows what Ginger’s doing. Brendon wants to cry, knowing that she’s sharing this with him, giving him this piece of their family, strengthening the ties between them, but he’s done far too much crying already. Far, far too much.

Th each finish their milk at their own pace, sitting for an indeterminable time afterward, and by unspoken agreement, they both rise at the same time to place their mugs in the sink. Brendon turns to walk back to the guest bedroom, but before he can leave the kitchen, Ginger says “Wait,” and he turns.

She watches him for a moment in the dim yellow light, cataloguing his features, studying his eyes, and he almost squirms under her gaze, but he forces it down and tries to understand the pain in her eyes. It’s different than Brendon’s own, he knows—aged, maybe wizened—but he doesn’t doubt it’s just as great as Brendon’s own.

She moves slowly enough for Brendon to see what she’s doing, spreading her arms with the blanket still scrunched up around her shoulders, and Brendon falls forward into her embrace. His arms wrap around her back in the cocoon of their blankets, warm and safe, and he closes his eyes and tries to be stronger—for her, and for him.

They stay there in the darkness, wrapped up in shallow warmth and silence, and until they feel a bit more human, they hold on, hold on, hold on.

 

* * *

 

Dawn breaks and fades into cheerful day, and Brendon’s not sure if he actually fell back asleep and dreamt the changing of the light, or if he simply watched the ceiling fade from dark grey to dim blue to bright, cold white. He gets up when he heard the coffee grinder, checks on the kids, still sleeping, before he pads downstairs and accepts a cup of coffee from Joseph.

It’s black, and normally Brendon takes it with much too much cream and sugar, but since Spencer left he’s been supplementing his own habits with Spencer’s because it’s something to hold on to. Spencer always took his coffee black.

Eventually, the kids stumble down in a blur of sleepy eyes and mumbled words, and then the TV clicks on and changes to something with fake, excited cartoon voices. Brendon rubs at his temples and tries to fight the headache coming on with just his force of will.

The kids don’t really know what’s going on, just that the adults are acting weird, but Jake seems to start getting curious when Ginger and Joseph finally get around to calling the twins.

That goes about as well as expected.

Jackie is in New Hampshire with her fiancé, but she books the next flight home, and Brendon can hear crying from the tinny phone speakers.

Crystal is only an hour away, and that phone conversation is spectacularly short, Ginger hanging up just after she told Crystal what the officers told them yesterday. She looks upset and pained, and she’s exceptionally quiet during the forty-five minutes before Crystal’s arrival.

And then Brendon feels like he’s reliving yesterday, with Crystal stomping through the door without knocking, grabbing the first body she finds, and holding on as she sobs. Brendon stands back and watches as Joseph, Ginger, and Crystal all cling to each other in the front hall, and he keeps a distracted eye on the kids in front of the TV, because he’s hoping to shelter them from the worst of it, until he has to—well, that’s one of the things he’s trying not to think about right now.

Crystal is five months pregnant and really starting to show, and Ginger berates her endlessly for driving so fast, but then they disappear off into some quiet corner of the house to talk about finer details, and Brendon goes to sink into the couch and stare at the cartoons without really thinking.

They end up spending half of the day there, even though Brendon had wanted to go home as soon as the kids were up. It’s just before noon when Brendon finally rounds Emily and Jake up, both of them complaining about never getting to see their aunts, and Brendon has them tucked safely in the car on the driveway and is about to leave when Crystal pulls him back.

He’s enclosed in another hug again before he can really figure out what’s going on, and Crystal’s arms crush around him. She whispers “I’m so sorry,” next to his ear, and Brendon nods mutely and says “Me too” before he extracts himself and drives away, trying to calm the panic rising in his chest.

All of this sounds too much like a goodbye.

Brendon’s not sure he’s ready for a goodbye, even if he knows how foolish it is to wait for a military KIA declaration that may never come. Right now, missing is all he can deal with—Spencer’s been missing for a great deal longer than the military says he’s been, since he shipped out. But killed—

Brendon can hardly stomach the word, much less figure out what to do with that kind of information. Right now, he’s not thinking about it. He’s just not ready.

 

Beyond that, things settle back into routine, and it hurts a lot more than it should. Emily goes off to daycare, Jake goes back to school, and Brendon walks into work like a zombie without a clue what his assignment is. Pete seems concerned, and keeps asking questions that Brendon’s not ready to answer. Answering Pete’s questions means reiterating everything that’s happened this past weekend, and he can’t even manage to say Spencer’s name right now, so he doesn’t think he’s got the energy to do that. He keeps shrugging Pete off until finally, Patrick seems to catch on that something’s not quite right, and reins him in. Brendon starts in on a newer article, something simple and fluffy that screams _pity_ from every page.

He doesn’t speak to anyone, and they learn not to speak to him, and he grinds out an article so flat and emotionless that the edits are going to be more like rewrites. He can’t bring himself to care.

Pete continues not to say anything, Ginger calls more than once a day to check up on him, though really, asking how he’s doing is like asking if he’s going to live while he’s bleeding from a stab wound to the gut. He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.

Even Emily starts to catch on that something’s wrong, but neither of them ask him about it, and so he keeps them going, showering them in as much love as he has, bedtime stories and extra kisses and smiles that steal all the energy from his body. He knows he’s going to have to address this eventually, but right now, everything is just…stopped. Paused.

Sometimes he feels like if he can hang onto Spencer just long enough, he can bring him back.

It’s foolishness.

 

* * *

 

It’s days later, after the initial shock has worn off, when the reality starts to set in, heavy and airless. Emily is at daycare, Jake is at school, Pete gave Brendon the rest of the week off, Brendon drops a plastic Winnie The Pooh mug while he’s washing it, and suddenly he’s clutching the edge of the sink and gasping out sobs and he literally feels like the entire fucking world just came crashing down on his too-small shoulders.

He can’t _do this_. Spencer’s not here, he’s not going to be here, and Brendon just…he just…these are his kids, and he’s their father, and somehow, some entirely fucking impossible way, he’s supposed to be their only father. He has to—Fuck. _Fuck._ He has to _tell_ them he’s all they’ve got, anymore, tell them that Daddy’s not coming home, not going to—to—fuck, to take them to the zoo and ramble on about the fish and he’s not going to be there when…when EVERYTHING.

 _Everything_ is going to happen, and Spencer’s not going to _be there._ Brendon fucking—he’s going to be the one to bundle them up for snowball fights in the backyard, and he’s going to be the one to hang up their finger-paint pictures on the fridge, and he’s going to be the one teaching Emily to ride a bike, or Jake to talk to girls, and he’s going to have to be the one to sit down with Emily when she’s older and try to turn his memories of this one man, this one, incredible man who was _everything_ to him for so long, and he’s going to have to turn him into someone real for her. Because she’s fucking four and she’s not going to _remember_ him, not the same way Jake will, not the way he does, every day, all the time.

And he’s going to be there, when Jake graduates high school and then college, sitting in the bleachers and clapping until his hands sting, and he’s going to have to walk Emily down the fucking aisle and finally watch his little girl go on to live the rest of her life, and… And all of it, _everything_ they’re going to do, it’s just so fucking happy and it’s going to be amazing, and Spencer _won’t be there_ and honestly, Brendon doesn’t know if he can be that happy again. He’s supposed to just…just keep on going, and watch his kids grow up, and he doesn’t think he has the ability, the energy, because he can’t even manage to pick up a fucking cup from the floor. How the _FUCK_ is he supposed to do _anything?_

He can’t… Spencer’s not here. He’s not here, and it’s wrong, because he’s supposed to… This wasn’t a one-person job. This was a fucking…a fucking partnership, and now Brendon’s the odd one out that has to do all this without Spencer, without him here to be Spencer. He doesn’t—

He can’t— He can’t breathe, and that’s been happening a lot lately, but suddenly it’s just so much, too much. There’s a pressure building in his skull and pushing everything out too far, too far away, and he can’t get any more air in, there’s too much in there that he just can’t get out, can’t let go of it because it’s one more thing being ripped away from him, one thing less that he still has, and—

“ _BRENDON!”_

There’s a shout, still ringing in his ears, and then sets of arms around his shoulders and they’re pulling at his skin and the rest of him follows, letting himself be dragged across tiled floor to carpet, until he’s pushed down and sits, and he doesn’t think he can hold himself up right now so he doesn’t try. He just lets his head fall forward and curls in on himself, arms tucked tightly against his body.

His brain knows, logically—if logic even has any place with him anymore—that he’s still crying, still breathing in gasps and rib-cracking bursts, and there’s so much pressure between his eyes and he’s a salty, snotty mess and there’s still a warm hand on his back. It applies just enough pressure, just enough to keep him grounded in himself, and it’s warm enough to feel safe, even if only a little bit.

He loses track of time, there, for a second. He’s aware that it’s passing but not how quickly, and when he finally comes back to himself, he’s uncomfortable and his limbs ache and his cheeks are taught with drying tears. 

“Hey,” Jon says softly, like he knows just how much noise Brendon can take, and just when the right time to speak would be. Brendon has to wait for his brain to come back online, and then he still can’t figure out why Jon is here, because Jon lives in Chicago, and Brendon is here, and here is not Chicago. Brendon hasn’t even spoken to Jon in—God, how long?

“You’re here,” he manages to croak out, and as he thought, his voice is shot. It doesn’t even sound like him; it hardly sounds human. He wipes at his eyes, sits up a little straighter, and tries to calm down a bit.

“Yeah,” Jon says, still soft, like Brendon is fragile. Maybe he is. “I had some time off, Cassie wanted to visit some of her cousins in Canada, and so I thought I’d come pay a visit.”

Brendon nods, because that makes sense, even if nothing is really making sense right now. He’s purposefully not dealing with the fact that Jon doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about Spencer, and Brendon has to tell him. Brendon should’ve told him, and should’ve told Ryan, because it was his job, but…

He honestly just forgot. Spencer was gone, and that’s the only thing that mattered in his universe, that and the fact that he has two kids to take care of on his own now, and he barely managed to do that. He can’t—he doesn’t want to think about it.

“I hope you don’t mind, but Ryan’s on his way.” Brendon winces, because yeah. Yeah, that figures. At least then he won’t have to do this more than once. He thinks it might break him. “It was gonna be a surprise party, sort of, just the three of us but…” Jon pauses, and Brendon thinks he understands a lot more than he’s letting on. “I’m guessing you’re not really up for it right now?”

Brendon shakes his head and bites down a bitter laugh. A party is so far from something he’s up for that it’s like a cosmic joke. He doesn’t even think he can stand on his own right now.

“Kids?” Jon asks, after a moment.

“Daycare, school,” Brendon says. Jon nods.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Brendon considers this for a moment, then, because he can’t really get out of it, nods and says “Wait. For Ryan.”

Jon seems sort of skeptical about that, but this entire situation is probably really strange for him, walking into a friend’s house just to find him having a breakdown in the middle of the kitchen. Everything in Brendon’s life has been turned upside down, as of late. A mental breakdown in the middle of the kitchen really isn’t that different from a breakdown on the porch, or in his car, or in a stall in the bathroom at work, and all of those have happened in the last few days. That’s why Pete told him to go home and not come back until he was okay again. If this keeps up, he’s never going back to work.

“Okay,” Jon says belatedly, and then checks his phone. Brendon rests his elbows on his knees and tries to keep the sniffling to a minimum. He hasn’t seen Ryan in…well, it’s been awhile since his last impromptu visit. Brendon’s lost track of time lately, so he doesn’t know exactly how long, but he doesn’t think it much matters, besides that his last visit was Before. This is After, and After is so very, very different from Before.

Ryan walks in without knocking, as he so often does, wearing what Brendon swears is fur. He strips it off and leaves it on the coat rack by the door, and under normal circumstances, Brendon would be mocking him endlessly for his strange choice in clothing. But this is After, and Brendon doesn’t really do those things anymore.

He doesn’t do much of anything, anymore, except take care of the kids and breathe.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asks the moment he walks in, and Brendon is almost glad that this is one of his perceptive moods, where he’s not so absorbed in his own head and his own writing that he fails to conceive of anything outside of it.

He seems like he’s about to round on Brendon, but Jon shakes his head violently, and gestures for Ryan to sit down next to Jon, across the coffee table from Brendon. He’s thankful for that; he doesn’t know how he’d react to having Ryan in his space, not with all the fading memories of fights between them. All the tension between them still buzzes, constantly, like it’s—it’s something.

He doesn’t know. Everything is all…fuzzy.

He takes a deep breath. Jon and Ryan are waiting him out in silence. He tells himself this is going to be okay, and starts to speak.

“A few days ago, I brought the kids to Ginger’s for the day. While we were there, a…a car pulled into the driveway, with two officers.” Brendon stops, feeling like this should be enough, and he knows, for military families, maybe it is. Maybe just those words are enough to strike fear into everyone. But Ryan doesn’t know, and Jon only has a vague connection, and they don’t understand.

“They—the officers—they told us Spencer was part of a mission,” Brendon says, trying not to pause too long in case Jon and Ryan start jumping to conclusions. Brendon wants to finish this. He wants to say it. “They went into some enemy camp, I don’t know, I—they couldn’t tell us. But they lost contact with them, and they said a day later, the place they were at had been attacked, or—or something, and they said everyone on the mission was classified MIA but—but that—” Brendon wipes at his eyes again, because he can’t see. “it’d been weeks, and they didn’t receive contact, and if they don’t hear anything in the next few days, they’re offi—” Brendon’s voice broke, and he clenched his teeth down so hard they hurt, and he made himself finish. “Officially killed in action.”

At that point, all the breath leaves his body, not for the first time. It’s quiet, just Jon and Ryan and Brendon, all breathing, all living and moving forward and being whatever it is they are. And Spencer is—

He’s not.

Brendon thinks he stops crying simply because it’s taking too much out of him. He can’t keep doing this, he’s going to wind up committed, or just go to sleep and never wake up, and he can’t. Jake and Emily need him. He can’t.

“God, Brendon,” Jon breathes, and in seconds he’s sitting next to Brendon, one arm curling around his shoulders, and Brendon finds he’s grateful for the touch. He needed it, more than he knew, and he needs people. He needs people to be able to do this, to keep on going and be the father he needs to be and he needs to—to plan a funeral, oh god. They haven’t been speaking about it, but oh god.

Brendon lets himself shake, but he’s not crying anymore. He doesn’t look at anything but his own knees, trying to keep himself from having another breakdown. He doesn’t know if he can take much more of this.

But then Ryan, in the corner of Brendon’s vision, speaks, and his tone rings false in Brendon’s ears, but he can’t read into anything right now. He’s too fucking tired. “You didn’t tell us until now.”

It’s a statement, not a question, and Brendon’s too hurt already to feel the stab of guilt at that. He knows he should’ve, but there’s a bigger part of him, a more important part, that told him he had to take care of the kids. He had to keep them safe, keep them going, and then maybe keep himself going for their sake. That was the limit to his energy, and he honestly just hadn’t thought.

Ryan stands, and says “Days. You didn’t tell me.”

Brendon draws in a shaky breath, and wishes he were strong enough to say something to put off the fight. Somehow convey to Ryan that he’s too tired to fight like this. He doesn’t have anything left in him, or what little he does, he needs to put into the kids, and keeping himself alive so he doesn’t orphan them. He can’t deal with Ryan’s issues right now.

“I’m his _best friend,_ ” Ryan yells suddenly, and Brendon flinches, clenches his hands into fists, and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look up. He shuts his eyes and tries to drown the world. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

Brendon shakes his head, not really an answer, more like a _stop, please._ Ryan doesn’t get it though. He doesn’t listen when he’s like this, and so Brendon curls in on himself, tries to disappear into his own head, because he _can’t._ Doesn’t Ryan get that? He physically can’t right now. He can’t have this fight, he can’t defend himself or his choices, he can’t pick up a goddamn cup from the floor. He can’t.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Ryan demands, and Jon is tense and still beside him. The shouts ring in Brendon’s ears, and he moves his hands over them, trying to dim the sound. It hurts. Everything hurts.

Ryan stomps a few paces, stops, and then starts to pace. “God, I knew this would happen,” he says with a bitter, dark laugh. Brendon doesn’t understand. His ears keep ringing, and all the words just rattle around in his mind, and none of this matters. Spencer is dead. He’s gone. And Brendon can’t do this. “You and your selfish hangups,” Ryan says, like he’s amused, and runs a ragged hand through his hair. “You never could get over the fact that he was my friend first. No, you had to have him all to yourself, you had to _take him_ away from me because you couldn’t stand the fact that he cared about someone else just as much as you, you prick, you selfish little—”

“Ryan!” Jon yells from beside him, and Brendon flinches against the noise and presses himself downward, downward, keeping his eyes shut and his limbs pressed in tight, like he can harden and harden and be strong enough to deal with this. He wants to be impervious. He wants to disappear, and he can’t because the kids need him, because Spencer is dead, and so he wants to be impervious.

“He was my _best friend,_ ” Ryan repeats angrily, like a defense to Jon’s words.

“And he was Brendon’s _husband,_ you fucking asshole. Grow the fuck up and realize the world doesn’t revolve around you for once.”

“Oh, but it revolves around Brendon?” Ryan snipes sarcastically, words like glass, slicing into Brendon’s skin like shrapnel, like bullets.

“No!” Jon shouts angrily, standing up next to Brendon, ready to launch into some sort of fight that Brendon really doesn’t know if he can handle right now. He can’t handle much of anything. He wants everything to just go away for a bit, maybe have some quiet time, where he can just…sleep. He hasn’t been able to sleep. He’s too tired to deal with Ryan, or with Jon, or with fighting, or with—

“Papa?”

Brendon’s spine goes taught, and he vaults himself off the couch, standing and blinking in confusion at the door, where Jake is standing with one hand on the handle and his backpack strap in the other. He looks confused, and maybe a little upset, and for once, Jon and Ryan have stopped making any sort of noise. Brendon looks at the clock, taking at least three tries to read the time, and he realizes this is about the time the bus drops Jake off from school.

God, he should’ve realized that. He should’ve kicked them both out long before Jake could see all this.

“Wha’s wrong?” He asks, his brow creasing, a frown overtaking all his features. Brendon doesn’t even have to think, he just goes to the door and kneels down, says in a falsely cheerful voice “Nothing’s wrong, buddy. Everything’s okay. Just some friends of Daddy’s.”

Jake’s eyes go wide and excited. “Daddy’s friends?” He questions, and oh, god. Brendon doesn’t need this right now. The last thing he needs is to drag Jake into this mess.

“Yeah, and you can see them later, I promise. But how about some PB&J, huh?”

Jake looks curiously over at Jon and Ryan, frozen where they’d been, and seems to consider it. Then he nods quickly and says “Okay. PB&J firs’.”

Brendon smiles, even though it feels like it’s tearing his skin, and ruffles Jake’s hair before he walks him into the kitchen and lets Jake climb up to one of the high top chairs around the island while Brendon pulls out the bread and the peanut butter and jelly. He’s quick and methodical, not really thinking about what he’s doing, just going through the motions and trying to turn his mind off for a damned second.

He pours Jake a glass of milk, even though he gets a pinched look on his face, and Brendon ruffles his hair again and turns on the TV to cartoons before he goes back to face Jon and Ryan. Hopefully the sound of Tom & Jerry being ridiculous will keep Jake from overhearing anything.

When he gets back to the living room, he has his arms wrapped around himself, and he feels small, and meek, and completely and utterly helpless. He can’t do this right now. He doesn’t even have time to freak out like he has been. He has a family to take care of. A broken family that he’s trying to hold together with gum and spit. He can’t deal with Ryan’s shit right now.

Jon and Ryan both stare blankly at him, and they don’t look like they’re about to say anything anytime soon, so Brendon tries.

His voice cracks and gives up on “I—” and he swallows the rest of his words and looks down. He doesn’t have words for this. He can’t explain this to Ryan in terms he’ll understand. That was always Spencer’s job, and now Spencer’s—

“Brendon—” Jon tries, sympathetically, but before he can get another word out, Ryan is bolting past him and pulling Brendon into a pointy, tight hug. Brendon blinks back his shock and tries to start some sort of interference for whatever crazy thing going through Ryan’s head, but he doesn’t have to.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says quietly, “I didn’t mean—I’m just so _angry._ He—I—Fuck. Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Brendon croaks weakly, closes his eyes, and holds on. Ryan is hard like bone, and too, too thin so that Brendon’s arms wrap around and then halfway back again, but he holds on, because Ryan is family. He needs family, right now; his family just got smaller, and it’s too small and it hurts, so he’s clinging to the family he has left because maybe—maybe.

 

* * *

 

Jon sticks around a lot longer than he’d planned, but he still has to fly back to Chicago after a few days, because he loves Spencer, but Cassie is his wife, and that’s something—well, Brendon gets it. Spencer is—was. Fuck.

Ryan sticks around a lot longer. He visits every day, even when he’s at his worst and his thoughts are so twirled up inside the mess of words inside his head that Brendon thinks his editor must be a saint. Sometimes, it helps, having Ryan around—Jake and Emily love him to pieces, though Brendon thinks it has something to do with how much they love his weird clothing.

Other days, he’ll walk into a room and catch Ryan staring at him, with these sad sort of eyes that just remind Brendon of the reason Ryan’s here all the time, and the reason they haven’t been tearing each other to pieces without Spencer here to moderate. It hurts, when he remembers. Most days he tries not to think about it. He tries to just keep on going, and on good days, he only ends up thinking about Spencer once every fifteen minutes or so.

Ryan helps him wrangle the kids into the car, namely by getting in himself, because Jake and Emily are, like Spencer, weirdly eager to please the bastard. Brendon counts his blessings and makes the short drive to Spencer’s parents’ house, Disney tunes playing the whole way. Brendon even tries to sing along to a couple of them, though his voice has been shot so much lately.

Ginger pounces on Ryan the moment the door is open and she’s given her grandkids proper attention. He makes some sort of strangled, surprised noise and starts to pull back, but then stops and slowly wraps his arms around Ginger’s small frame. Brendon steps past them quietly, because while Ginger is his mother-in-law, she’s basically Ryan’s mother, for all that she raised him while his real mother was hell knows where.

Jake and Emily are hanging off Grandpa Joe like monkeys, and Brendon almost—almost smiles at the sight. It’s getting easier, with each day, to breathe—Brendon doesn’t like it one bit. Not when it feels like betrayal, even though everyone says it’s good; it’s moving on.

Brendon doesn’t want to move on. He wants his husband back.

He sighs, because that’s an impossible thing right now, and goes to scrounge through the kitchen for some sort of tea, for Ryan and maybe himself, if it’ll calm his stomach down. He gives Ginger and Ryan their moment, and goes all out to make tea for the four of them, with chocolate milk for Jake and Emily, in cups with tops because they’re still both so prone to spilling.

They never really make plans to come over here, or how long they’re staying, or what the purpose of the visit is—it’s mostly just assumed that Brendon goes there when he feels he should, and they never ask questions, never seem busy. They just take him in, take over handling the kids for a few hours, and Brendon lets himself breathe, for just a moment. He doesn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have this—if he were married to one of those military brats with parents that think Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was the supremest law of everything, and its repeal was the start of the downfall of America. The ones that wouldn’t even give him the time of day, much less inform him if a couple of military officers showed up and said he was missing, or dead.

Since his parents shafted him the moment they met Spencer all those years ago, he’s convinced himself he didn’t need anyone, because he had Spencer and eventually, he had the kids, and that was enough. It was supposed to be enough. But the realization that Spencer wouldn’t be there, anymore, and it was just him in the kids—well, maybe Brendon needs something more, after all. Ginger and Joseph give him that. They took him in as their own, they love their grandkids like the moon loves the sun, and they give him this—these few moments, when the kids are occupied and he can let his walls down, just for the briefest moment. He feels safe here; warm.

God, if he’d had to suffer through this alone, in that house that feels too empty without Spencer there, with that broken promise lingering over him, the one he’d made Spencer say before he shipped out: _I promise I won’t leave you._

Brendon’s hands shake like leaves, but he manages to pour nice, hot tea into each of the mugs without spilling, and he manages to keep them balanced while he brings them around.

Ginger and Ryan are still where they were, though they’re talking face-to-face instead of hugging, now. Brendon offers them tea silently and stands to the side, waiting for them to finish. In a moment, like some sort of decision was made while Brendon wasn’t paying attention, Ryan nods at the both of them in turn, sips his tea with a pleased “Mmm” and disappears into the house.

Brendon turns toward Ginger, watching for some sort of outward sign as to how she’s feeling, but he doesn’t get anything before she’s saying, quietly “They sent me information about—about a service.”

“A service?” Brendon asks, confused, but the second it’s out of his mouth, his throat closes up and he flinches. It’s one of the things he’s been trying not to think about, and it’s… “Shit.”

Ginger’s eyes sadden as she continues, with quiet uncertainty. “They—the military, they’re paying for it. Or they will, if the—if we—if it’s what we want.”

Brendon chews on his lower lip, and sips at his tea to distract himself. It’s warm and the steam swirls against his lips, the tip of his nose, a brief spark of warmth.

“It’s—We don’t have to,” she continues softly. “It’s entirely your choice.”

“But—” Brendon starts, frowning in confusion, “he’s your son.” Brendon clenches his teeth together and tries to ignore the way his stomach reacts when he remembers he’s supposed to stop talking about Spencer in the present tense.

Ginger huffs a little, surprising Brendon in how _normal_ it sound when everything has been so messed up, lately. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says fondly, “I gave up my rights the moment he married you.” She pauses then, chewing on her lip and looking at Brendon carefully. “Brendon, if you don’t want to…” She trails off, unsure.

Brendon sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. He’s tired—it’s a permanent state of being for him, this last week, and he doesn’t expect it’s going to change any time soon. Not when gunfire fills his head every time he closes his eyes. “No,” he says shortly. “No, we should. He—” Brendon stops. “It’s closure,” he starts up again, looking up to search Ginger’s eyes for some sort of understanding. “If he’s really not—” Brendon doesn’t kid himself into thinking he can finish that sentence. “We should. For the kids. For us.”

Ginger nods but says “Are you sure?”

Brendon hesitates, but nods himself, wobbly. “I—It could be years waiting for an official KIA. I don’t want to—” he pauses, chooses his words carefully so he doesn’t say anything that ends with them both in tears, again. There are a lot of words he’s not allowed to use, anymore. “We both know the statistics.” Ginger nods. They do. It’s one of those things he feels like he knows instinctually, like it was ingrained into him since he was stupid enough to fall in love with a future Marine. A situation like this—if they got anything more than a couple of years waiting just to wind up with a big, fat ‘We’re sorry, ma’am, but we’ve concluded he was killed in action’, it’d be nothing short of a damn miracle.

Soldiers don’t stay missing very long, over there. Just long enough for the damn insurgents to realize they aren’t going to get any information out of them, and then—

Ginger nods, solemnly, and says “I’ll work it out with the VA.” Then she disappears into the depths of her house again, and Brendon’s left to stand numbly in place, sipping at his tea and wondering how old he was when he realized just how fragile life is. Whether it was 7 or 18 or 29, he’s damn sure it was too soon. Much, much too soon.

He sighs, holds his tea a little closer to himself, and tries not to think about finally having to tell the kids. It’s his new favorite hobby, trying not to think about things. He’s not particularly good at it, but he keeps on trying, because what else is there to do?

 

* * *

 

They have a hell of a time trying to plan a funeral for someone still officially declared MIA, but the military made their promises, even if it was just to comfort a grieving mother, and now they have to keep them. It doesn’t make it any easier, trying to navigate through a bureaucratic nightmare while he’s running on no sleep and trying not to throw a temper tantrum to challenge the Peanut Butter Fiasco with Jake when he was two.

It’s wearing on them both—Ginger’s looking thin and gaunt, and Brendon’s started showering and brushing his teeth in the dark because every time he catches sight of the ghost in the mirror, he flinches and pulls away.

This whole entire ordeal—straining them so much that they’re fit to snap like over-tightened violin strings—makes Brendon wish to himself, while he’s lying in bed waiting for sleep, that Spencer had been declared KIA officially, because then no one would keep offering him and Ginger false hope that they know isn’t true, but doesn’t make it easier to deal with. Spencer’s gone, gone like a flame without air, and it’d make this ‘moving on’ business a hell of a lot easier if people would stop saying “Oh, MIA? Well, there’s still a chance, are you sure you aren’t jumping the gun?”

Besides the fact that Brendon now flinches at any sort of reference to weaponry or war, it makes him want to _hit people,_ which he just doesn’t do. Especially not in front of the kids. Because he knows how these things work, he’s not stupid. He’s heard the town Spencer was supposedly in was _flattened._

Spencer was given orders to walk into a firefight, and then he disappeared, and the way Brendon figures, he’s in one of two places: scattered all over the ground in that godforsaken wasteland, or piled in a dark, cement room somewhere, beaten and bloodied for information until the bastards took pity on him and put a bullet in his forehead.

As he retches into the wastebasket he’s started keeping by the side of the bed, he’s pretty sure he might just start voting for Republicans, because they seem more likely to _bomb the fuck_ out of the Middle East. He wonders if it makes him a bad person, to want an entire region blown to smithereens just to make damn sure that every last person involved in killing his husband is reduced to pink mist.

Fucking hell.

 

* * *

 

The second wave of news comes in the morning, and this time it comes by phone. Brendon can’t decide if it’s better or worse this time around, having just a voice coming from a plastic thing pressed against his ear, without anyone to watch the way he breaks down and starts throwing things against the wall.

He hears it second-hand from Ginger, who’s biting out words in between fits of crying so heavy and deep that Joseph has to take the phone from her and finish. They got a call, this time, no military men in dress blues, eyes cold like stone. Apparently, they’ve retrieved some damaged thermal imaging from the area (though how it got damaged and how it came to be in the first place are classified) and managed to see the attack that sieged the city-town-whatever Spencer was sent in to.

Brendon gets a picture in his head, a bunch of little red blobs moving around between blue-green squares representing buildings, and then suddenly, nothing but a bright white flash, engulfing the whole damn screen.

When it clears and the ground finally soaks up the heat of the explosion, there’s nothing but a sea of dark, cold blue, and it tears Brendon’s chest right back open.

He never actually gets to see the images, just hears an interpretation, vaguely worded to cover up ongoing military operations, and he knows. He’s known before, but now it’s different, more permanent, and Brendon hopes like hell the kids sleep in late just this once, because he can’t stop crying.

 

* * *

 

With a twisted sort of irony, the funeral arrangements get easier after that. The military gives them a tentative KIA declaration, even though they aren’t willing to put it down onto paper without a body.

There are far too many choices, choices that honestly _don’t matter,_ because Spencer is dead and he couldn’t give a shit what color the empty casket they put into the ground is. He doesn’t _have_ an opinion anymore, don’t they fucking _get that?_

Ginger and him mostly end up agreeing to whatever the hell the default is, a full military funeral, though Brendon insists the uniformed officers with guns stand well away from his kids. It’s going to be bad enough having to explain this to them, he doesn’t need to traumatize them further by making them think they’re being shot at. Jake might not be old enough to really get what _war_ is, but he knows what a gun is, and he knows that guns mean death, and that’s more than enough for a seven-year-old to know.

When there’s nothing left to decide except for a date, Ginger pins him with wide, sad eyes that see far too much etched into the lines of Brendon’s face. Then she says “We have to tell Jake and Emily,” and Brendon swallows and says “I know.”

He turns down her offer to do it together, because as much as he loves Ginger, and owes her for all this, he thinks he needs to do this alone. Just them, in their home, Brendon already teary-eyed as he sits them down next to each other on the couch and kneels to meet their eyes.

Jake is squirming, and Emily is bored and confused and they’re both just a little bit freaked, because even four-year-olds pick up on the kind of tension they’ve been wading through for weeks, and he just—he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know where to start, or—he doesn’t know anything.

But he has to, has to try, at least, and so he breathes for about as long as a four-year-old’s patience can withstand, and then says, slow and soft and forcibly calm “You know I love you guys, right?”

Jake nods and Emily says “love you too, Papa,” and they still don’t know anything’s wrong.

“And you know your Daddy loves you,” he ignores the pang of guilt for using present tense, but he thinks—maybe. Maybe if Spencer is out there, somewhere, heaven or whatever, and if he is, he knows it. He knows there isn’t anything anywhere that would ever make Spencer stop loving his children. Death wouldn’t stop that.

Emily and Jake both nod, warily, and Emily seems to perk up at the mention of Dad. Brendon tries not to let that crush him, just yet.

“And you know neither of us would ever leave you on purpose, right?”

There are more nods, but Emily is starting to get teary-eyed, asks “Are you leaving, Papa?”

“No, sweetheart,” he says, right away, and leans in to kiss her on the forehead, wrap an arm around her tiny shoulders. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” Jake is silent—deadly silent—and still, so still, watching Brendon with eyes that know too much.

Brendon pushes on. “Sometimes—” his voice cracks, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Sometimes, though, no matter how much Daddies love their kids, or how much kids love their Daddies or their Mommies—sometimes the world doesn’t play fair.” Jake’s bottom lip starts to quiver, and oh no. No, no, no, he doesn’t want to do this, he can’t—he has to, he has to and it _sucks,_ it sucks the most, it’s just— Shit. _Shit._

“Remember how Daddy is fighting the bad guys, Emmy?” He says to her, because she’s staring, all wide-eyed and terrified, and he can’t stop Jake from piecing this together anymore, just keeps hoping he’ll hold out long enough for Brendon to get through this, because having to say it twice…

Emily nods, and her hair bounces with it. He places a hand on her knee, and his other on Jake’s, keeping them tethered to each other and to the ground.

“Pumpkin—bad things happen, sometimes. And no one can do anything about it, and it’s horrible and it’s mean and it’s not fair, but it happens, and—” Jake is starting to crack next to him, and Brendon feels himself starting to shake apart from the inside, and “A really bad thing happened to Daddy, Emmy.”

Big, fat tears are streaming their way down Jake’s cheeks, silent but so much, too much, and Brendon shifts so he can gather Jake up, pull him forward and tuck his head against the crook of Brendon’s shoulder, holding him close while he tries to explain this for Emily, in words she can understand, somehow. Somehow.

“Izzy okay?” Emily asks, genuinely curious, and she’s not crying yet, but Brendon knows it can happen so quickly—too quickly.

“No, honey. No, he’s not.” Brendon’s flat-out ignoring the crackle in his voice now. It’s a damn miracle he hasn’t burst into sobs himself, but they need this, they need their father—the one they have left, anyway—and he can’t think about himself right now. He has to be what they need. He has to be strong for them.

“When’s Daddy coming home?” Emily asks, demanding, and her chin starts to wobble dangerously. Brendon just—just looks at her with sad eyes, bites down on his lower lip and tries to keep it together, for her. She needs someone to do this for her, to be there for her—they both do, and it has to be him because—

Because.

Because “Daddy’s not coming home, baby,” Brendon says, and Jake bursts into heart-wrenching sobs beside him, clinging at Brendon’s shirt and pushing his forehead against Brendon’s shoulder. Brendon just wraps his arm tight, tighter, tightest around Jake, tries to steady the worst of the shaking, but he can’t fix this. He can’t make this better.

“But he _has to,_ ” Emily says, defiant, determined and red-faced. “He _promised._ He has to come home.”

Brendon shakes his head sadly, tries to pull Emily to him but she fights it, pushes herself back against the cushions. “He can’t come home, honey. He’s hurt—hurt real bad, and he has to go someplace else, Em.”

“But I don’t _want_ him to!” She screams, still whacking away Brendon’s hands, even more violently this time. “I want him _home,_ ” she states, her voice loud and filled with so much fight, and it’s breaking Brendon’s heart, they both are, Jake is a mess, and he’s hurting, and he needs to tell Jake it’s going to be okay, and he needs to tell Emily that it’s going to be okay, and that he can’t—Spencer can’t come home.

“I know, baby, I know. So do I,” he says, tries to reason with her, do _something,_ but he just. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what she needs to hear, he doesn’t _know._ “I know he promised you—we both did, but he can’t make it home, baby. He had to go to a different place, a special place, and—and he can’t leave that place, Em. He has to stay there, and he can never come see us but—”

“No!” She shrieks, “No! Daddy’s coming home! He is! You’re lying! He’s coming home!” and then she shoots off like a rocket, flies from the couch in a blur of fury and motion, before Brendon can even make a grab for her, and he hears tiny feet stomping up the stairs, making so much noise, and his heart fucking _shatters._

He wants to go after her—it’s his initial instinct, his base, but he did some reading before he did this, tried to get some sort of handle on this, like it would help, and—she needs to be alone right now. She needs to be someplace quiet, and she needs to figure things out, and Brendon’s entire body is screaming at him to follow her, to hold her close and never let go, but he can hear the door shut to her room and she’s safe in there, he knows she is, logically, and he just—

Jake pulls away from him abruptly, and his face is streaked with tears and his eyes are red and he’s a mess, a complete disaster, and he pulls back and looks Brendon in the eye and asks, in a wavering, uncertain voice “Is he really gone?”

And Brendon—god, Brendon would give _anything,_ a hundred thousand times over, to be able to tell him no. To fix this, just…make it all go away, make it better, mend his children’s hearts and just never have this happen and god. He’s not cut out for this. _No one_ is cut out for this.

But— “Yeah, Jake-a-saur. Yeah. He’s gone.” And that’s what breaks him, shatters the both of them, and Jake just breaks wide open, flings himself back onto Brendon and cries, but it’s so quiet, so subdued, and Brendon just—he doesn’t know what to do with that. It hurts more than the heart-piercing sobs. It kills him, and he just wraps both his arms around his son, holds on tight, says “I’m sorry” over and over like it can help, holds on so tight, and doesn’t let go. He’s never letting go.

 

* * *

 

Jake ends up curled up on the couch, wrapped up like a tortilla in a blanket, and Brendon pets his hair and wipes the tears off his cheeks and gives him kleenex and turns on the television. He’s quiet, so quiet that it’s impossible to ignore, but he’s doing alright, Brendon thinks. Alright as any of them can be. He doesn’t want to let him out of his sight, but he’s worried about Emily, and Jake’s—well, Brendon’s done what he can so far. He needs his own time, and Brendon keeps on trying to ignore the way he’s too grown-up for his age, too much like an adult. It shouldn’t be that way.

He creeps up to Emily’s room and opens her door slowly, but he can’t see Emily anywhere in her room. He wanders in, not calling out because for all he knows, she’d freak out at any sound. He finds her curled up in the corner of her closet, clothes fallen from the hangers when she crawled in there and strewn around her like a nest. She’s clutching her stuffed polar bear to her chest—the one that Brendon got her at the zoo—and she’s trying to use one of her doll’s miniature brushes to brush out his fur.

She’s not crying, though the signs that she has been are there, and she seems content, humming to herself and brushing her bear. “Hey, M&M,” he says weakly, feeling wobbly and unsure of himself, and he gives up trying and just collapses onto the floor next to her, like he meant to do that all along. “What’re you doing?”

“Cleaning Bay,” she says simply. Brendon is still charmed every time he hears her say that, the name she gave her bear when she was little enough that she couldn’t quite manage “bear” and so she just said it her own way. Spencer had laughed and told Brendon he didn’t care if she never managed to get the pronunciation right, so long as she kept on being that adorable.

It all feels really far away, right now.

Brendon nods in response, because that’s a logical answer and what else can he say about it? He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, or feeling, but he’s trying to get some sort of read on her, trying to find some way to connect with his daughter about this. “Em—”

“Bay’s gotta be pretty for when Daddy comes home.”

And that—that right there—cracks Brendon open, spills his insides all over the floor, grabs his heart and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes until all the blood pours out of it and it he dies. “Emily, Daddy’s not—”

He stops, stops because Emily looks up at him with eyes so fierce that he’d be stupid to try to convince her of anything right now. He’d be stupid to finish that sentence. And god, her eyes are so blue, completely blue, _his_ blue, and Brendon just—he can’t. Not right now. He knows, logically, that this is some sort of denial, or just a flat out rejection, that she doesn’t understand that Spencer _can’t_ come back, but he doesn’t have the energy left to fight her right now, and drilling it into her head isn’t going to do anything but hurt her.

He reaches out, pushes a swath of dark hair behind her ear, and tries a fragile, cracked smile. She smiles back, genuinely, and starts humming again, and Brendon leans over to place a gentle kiss on her forehead and say “Don’t fall asleep in here, okay?”

She nods that she understands but doesn’t look up, and Brendon holds in a sigh and gets back to his feet, knees protesting and limbs shaky. She’s okay for now, he thinks, and while this isn’t the last time they’ll speak of it, she’s done talking about it for now. He knows that she’s old enough to understand that this is real, and that something sad happened, but beyond that, he doesn’t know. She’s strong, though; he knows that much. She’s so strong, and so is Jake, and it’s more than possible they’re handling this better than he is, finding coping methods that he can’t figure out, because all he can do right now is keep going, hoping that maybe, tomorrow, he’ll be able to breathe again.

Maybe tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

They have the funeral two days before Thanksgiving, on the 26th, because Brendon thinks both him and Ginger are feeling just twisted enough to want to paint the holiday black with death for a good long while, though it’s subconscious enough for them not to realize what they’re doing.

As expected, the kids handle it better than he does. Emily is pretty normal, not really registering that he’s gone, and she keeps saying “When Daddy comes home” and it hurts, but he tries to understand her.

Jake understands in a vague, almost detached sort of way, and he’s subdued when Brendon moves like a robot that morning, helping him into his tiny little dress suit and Emily into her new dress. He hates these clothes, hates seeing his kids dressed up like dolls, or like they’re high-society. They make him feel like he’s forcing his kids to stop being kids, squashing the individuality out of them, like all those rich families that tote their kids around to social events, like they’re nothing more than accessories.

But it’s just this once, and just because—as much as he hates it—certain things are expected of them, as a Marine’s family. Besides, Emily seems to like this idea of pretty, flowing dresses—before now, Brendon and Spencer had mostly dressed her in pants because she had a tendency to choose the worst days to try to play rough with the boys. Brendon can’t say if he’s relieved to see her interested in something girly for a change, or if this is just the start to Brendon’s ultimate fear of some punk taking his beautiful daughter away from him.

Either way, she’s only four, and Brendon needs to worry about trying to explain what they’re doing in a cemetery when Emily doesn’t even understand that death is permanent. He thinks maybe Jake will help her understand, because he understands just enough to make sense of this, but he’s still young enough to connect with Emily in a way he can’t anymore.

He drifts further into his head, the closer they get to the cemetery. It’s not something conscious, because doing these things on purpose—spacing out at really bad times—make him feel like a bad parent, and he can’t have bad-parent moments anymore, not when he’s the only person Emily and Jake have to rely on. But he still drifts, because as much as Emily and Jake are his life, Spencer is—was—a part of that. It feels strange to him, thinking of Emily and Jake without Spencer. It was always the three of them, they were always the most important, the everything, even if the kids would always take precedence over Spencer because—well, because that’s how parenting works.

But it feels wrong somehow, trying to do all this without Spencer, even though he’s been doing it for years—since Spencer joined the Marine Corps and fucked off to boot camp—but it’s different now. He’s not going to be back to fix anything that Brendon breaks. There’s no relief effort coming to help him, no backup, no rescue if everything gets fucked six ways to Sunday. Spencer isn’t a part of this anymore, of them, because he’s gone, and Brendon doesn’t know what to do with the giant, empty space standing right next to him.

They tried to keep it small, him and Ginger—the military doesn’t really know how to do small, but they managed to find some sort of medium. No formal wake, with all the pictures everywhere and everyone and their brother attending. Just those that knew him, gathering in the middle of the cemetery on a sunny afternoon, listening to the wind because the sound of everyone breathing and crying together is just a bit too overwhelming.

Jake and Emily seem to pick up on the atmosphere when Brendon finally walks up with them, hand-in-hand, and everyone turns sad eyes in their direction. Ginger and Joseph are there, waiting, and they gather Emily and Jake in front of them, shielding them from everyone else, from people that don’t really understand, because even though they’re all family, there’s that distance there that makes it easier. It’s easier for them to move on, letting go of somewhen they used to know, letting go of the idea of someone. It’s not—Spencer was never an idea, for him.

Spencer is—

Was. Spencer was a constant. Permanent. Forever. _‘Til death do us part,_ and really, Brendon promised himself to stay strong for this. For the kids. He has to.

They’re a solemn group, mostly dressed in black, the only group in the entire cemetery, like the world is giving them this single, solitary day just for Spencer, like Spencer is the only one that’s—

 _Be strong, Brendon_.

There’s some sort of pastor, or priest, or someone—Brendon doesn’t know, doesn’t really care, because he’s not reading Bible passages about fire and sin and trying to convince his kids that their fathers are monsters. Instead, he speaks solemn words from so many different sources, Brendon can’t keep up. He has deep wrinkles and kind eyes that don’t squint against the sun, and his voice is steady and calm, flowing over him like ocean waves, lulling him into peace.

There’s a strong, firm hand on his shoulder and a small, tight hand gripping his hand, and he clings to them like anchors, like lifelines, tethering him to the ground, keeping him where he needs to be. The words wash over him, never really setting in, and he feels the sun at his back, not quite warm enough, trying to keep himself in check. Jake and Emily stand before him, still, so still. Jake isn’t fidgeting, and Emily isn’t whining or getting bored, and he almost wonders if he’d feel better if they were. If he’d feel normal, almost. If things would maybe be a bit more okay.

Instead he just waits, and listens, and watches as the last whole pieces of his world finally break apart like cracks in concrete, forming slowly over time until finally just a single raindrop falls and the whole damn thing crumbles. He can’t hold on anymore, can’t keep it in his hands, close to his heart, because Spencer is gone like rain in the sun, like sand in cradled hands, like paper in the flames, leaving nothing but quiet ash.

The world stills around him, blurs and just…stops, because this is real. This is happening, really happening, and once upon a time Spencer was kissing him in his parents’ garage, pulling him into the ocean in his brand new suit, holding his hand for the first time in front of his parents and their friends and what felt like the world. Once upon a time, Spencer was cradling their son in his arms, eyes wide with wonder and terror and happiness, and once upon a time Spencer was pressing him against the sheets, kissing silent promises into his skin, branding him with words like _forever._

Forever is a damn cruel promise to break.

Because Spencer isn’t there, anymore, not there telling Brendon that this was it, this was all he was ever going to ask for, this was his everything. Once upon a time, Spencer was there, and now he’s somewhere on the other end of the earth, letting the sand swallow him up as a little red dot on a screen somewhere far away fades into yellow, green, blue, gone. And Brendon is here, trying to hold together the shards of his family with bleeding, incompetent hands, staring at the stripes and stars laid over an empty casket, harsh in their surety. 

He listens as one voice fades into another, like some sort of last stand, a symphony of voices using the last of their breath to try to raise the dead, breathe life where there is none, paint memories into something tangible, something Brendon can almost, just touch with his fingertips before it rushes away, cool and invisible.

He listens as words stack themselves on words, thick and pressing down on his shoulders with every new voice, so many words and so many people, and he catches small turns of phrase, sometimes familiar, sometimes not. Jon speaks of love, and celebrating life, and holding on. Joseph speaks of bravery and duty in strong, loyal words that Brendon isn’t sure he believes as much anymore, but he’s thankful for them anyway. Ryan reads a poem about family and the soul and [the number Seven](http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww124.html), and Ginger says a few words about sons and daughters, and about mothers, before she excuses herself and presses tear-stained cheeks into Joe’s coat.

Brendon listens, and listens, and when silence falls to leave a space for him, he brushes it aside with a shake of his head, solitary and absolute, because he has no more words. He has no words at all, not for this. He lets the empty spaces speak for themselves, and all that they don’t say is more than all that was said. He can feel it, filling him up with nothing but air, hollow and cold despite the sun.

The voices fade, and he stares straight ahead, hands clenched at his sides desperately, shaking. He flinches as each gunshot rings out, twenty-one shots firing into the endless sky, flinging themselves toward Heaven with reckless abandon and a cold disregard for Earth-bound loves and losses.

Sharp voices penetrate the deadly calm after the rain of gunfire, punctuated and precise, and Brendon watches as white-gloved hands lift the flag from the empty, wasted casket and fold it, careful and final. The red and white stripes disappear beneath the blue, dark and spotted with stars, tiny bursts of light in the darkness.

Brendon doesn’t register what’s happening when one of the uniformed officers kneels down, folded flag in hand, and looks first to Ginger, who shakes her head violently and looks toward Brendon. But Brendon shakes his head as well, because he’s insignificant, here. He realizes then that he’s not the one being left behind, in all this, though it feels like he is. He’s not the one that’s been abandoned, at least not in the way it matters, and without his conscious approval, his eyes flick down to Jake, standing like a tiny stone statue before him.

The officer meets Brendon’s eyes and nods, almost imperceptibly, before he pins his gaze on Jake, and with steady, slow hands, [offers the folded flag to him](http://usmclife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Before.jpg).

Of all the moments in the entire universe, it’s that moment that matters, that moment that Brendon feels his heart stop and all the breath leave his body when he passes on, because he looks down and Jake is trembling, staring straight ahead and holding himself together by just a thread. Pain and sadness lines his face, folds and wrinkles too deep for anyone his age to have, and Brendon wants nothing more than to just _go,_ get him away from here, get him away from everything that’s hurting him, keep him safe and warm and happy and give him everything.

But he holds on because there’s nowhere else to go. This is it, it’s the only path they can take to move forward, and he closes his eyes and tries to stay whole when Jake reaches out with hands still so small and pulls the flag to his chest, tears racing down his cheeks silently and steadily as he finally breaks his gaze and ducks his head with his eyes shut against the world. Emily watches him, confused, scared, lost, and it’s all Brendon can to to place an open palm on the top of her head, watching Jake with her, letting him stand on his own in the world, just this once. It’s too soon, and it’s too much, and it only lasts a moment but it’s enough, because in that moment he sees his only son try to face the world with nothing but his own strength for the first time, and it breaks them both open but he lets it happen.

He’s on his knees then, pulling Jake in toward him, back to the safety of his arms, where the world is a little less scary and a little less lonely, and he holds Emily just as close as she struggles to understand the world around her, trying to make connections she’s too young to fully comprehend.

Brendon just holds on, silent and broken, and tries to fight the world off for a moment longer. For them. Just one moment longer, for them.

 

* * *

 

Everyone keeps on trying to help him, in the aftermath. Ryan comes by and stutters through awkward half-sentences, hugs the kids even though he looks like he’d rather not. Jon stops by and talks about his half-cousin or something that was in the military, but the moral of the story ends up being that sometimes soldiers just don’t make it home, and Brendon already knew that, damn it.

People he doesn’t even know start leaving him food, like maybe he’s so distraught he can’t manage to feed his children. He’s grateful—Jake becomes quite taken with the idea of chocolate chip cookie bars—but he’s running out of room in his fridge, and he kind of wishes everything would stop screaming _pity_ at him. He doesn’t really want to be reminded that he’s got something to be sad about.

Ginger proves to be the most persistent, and the only one Brendon gives free reign too, because Spencer was her son, and Jake and Emily are her grandchildren, and she is—for all intents and purposes—their only grandmother. She can do whatever the hell she wants, up to and including certain late-night snacks consisting of far too much sugar. It helps, too. He likes to think it helps the kids—Jake has started sleeping with the flag next to him in bed, like a baby blanket. He’s surprised it’s stayed folded, but the military must’ve tucked in the corners nice and tight, neat, just like everything they do. Almost everything. He thinks about getting it framed, when Jake lets it out of his sight for a moment, but he also thinks that might hurt just a bit too much. He’s seen those triangular frames before and he doesn’t know where to get one, but he doesn’t really want to look too hard, either.

And life goes on, for the most part. Just like it did after Spencer deployed, and after they found out the news, and the semi-official KIA declaration. He hurts, and he tries not to let on most days because he has Jake and Emily and a job and appearances to try to keep, but he catches himself at odd times. Mostly he tries to forget about it altogether—it’s not all that different from when he was deployed. But then there are those rare times that he actually remembers Spencer won’t be coming back, and he feels his heart crack open at least twice a day.

Most days he can pull himself back together, keep on walking and moving and not thinking all too much. He thinks it’s okay. Almost. Sort of. It will be, anyway. Eventually. It has to.

Saturdays are the hardest. Emily keeps on asking when they’re going to write Daddy again, and Jake always gets this struck-deer look, wide eyes and a wobbly lower lip, and Brendon would keep on writing the letters with them as a sort of grieving method, if he thought he were strong enough for that. He writes letters to Spencer on his own, sometimes, in his head late at night, whispering to the ceiling. He talks about their week, and how things are at work, and how he’s doing, and sometimes he starts cursing at Spencer for leaving him in this fucking mess, and sometimes he gets choked up and apologizes and says he didn’t mean it, he’s just…

It doesn’t really help much, or at least it doesn’t seem to, but the one time he breaks and tells Ryan he’s been doing this, Ryan just nods, says he does it sometimes too, and that it’s good. Ryan’s the one seeing a psychologist regularly anyway—a condition of his editor—and he figures it can’t hurt much. So long as he doesn’t disillusion himself into believing Spencer is actually going to come home, stroll in through the door like he’s just returning from a short trip.

He doesn’t really think he could manage to forget that no, that’s not going to happen, his husband is fucking _dead,_ he gets it. As much as he tries to ignore the hell out of everything that’s happened the past month or so, there’s always that bone-deep pain, right there, just begging to be acknowledged.

Brendon knows this is the way people end up having psychotic breaks, or whatever. At least, he thinks it might be. Some sort of extreme refusal to address problems or even deal with them, leading to repression and anxiety without knowing the real cause for it, and then next thing you know, you’re in a straight jacket yelling about the bugs crawling all over you, or knives swimming around in your insides.

He wonders what shrapnel feels like, when you get hit with it. If Spencer had scars, tiny pinprick scars all over, before he was blown up.

He wonders how long Spencer was in pain before he died. He hopes it was instant and painless. Another sick, sort of dark part of him hopes it wasn’t so quick, just so that maybe, Spencer got a chance to do that whole life-before-your-eyes thing, so that he died when he was thinking about the kids.

That’s a fucking horrible thought.

Brendon shivers and pulls in on himself, burrowing under the covers a little more firmly. He’s abandoned staring at the ceiling tonight, instead opting to blink into the darkness under the covers, rationing his breath so he doesn’t use up all the air too quickly. He keeps pretending that his insomnia will just go away on its own, and that he can keep operating on a few restless hours indefinitely. He’s been managing so far, mostly because something about kids means you need to be attentive, at least when you’re driving with them in the car, or doing anything for them and their well-being. If he’s a little spacey the rest of the time, it’s just expected of him.

He wonders if Spencer knows he’s not sleeping.

Then he remembers that Spencer is dead, and he can’t _know_ anything, and then he thinks about religion, and his damn parents, and how they up and abandoned him because he wanted to marry his stupid boyfriend.

Brendon thinks it’s a shitty thing to do, abandon your kid when there are kids all over the country going off to fight a war and get themselves killed. Ginger isn’t _choosing_ to pretend her kid doesn’t exist, Ginger’s son is _dead._ He’s fucking _gone,_ and Brendon’s parents are off in hell-knows-where, praying to God every day that the son they didn’t love enough to keep around sees the error in his ways and comes crawling back to them and the church, leaving his husband and his family because that’s obviously the _right fucking thing to do in this situation, AND—_

And thinking about his parents isn’t helping at all. He breathes, in and out, measured and slow. He’s dealt with these issues, and he’s over them, accepted them. A part of him is always going to be angry, simply for Jake and Emily’s sake, but he doesn’t have the energy or the mental capacity to be angry with them himself. He’s too damn busy being angry with Spencer, at least when he’s not just extremely fucking torn up about it.

Ryan calls him an exquisite disaster. Brendon calls Ryan an ass, and tells him to fuck off and write a damn book about how fucking pitiful Brendon Urie is, falling apart because he wasn’t quite strong enough to be married to a Marine, after all. Ryan leaves and tells him to calm down, take a moment, and call to apologize when he’s feeling better.

Brendon lasts about three hours before he does just that.

Jon goes back to Chicago—or maybe he’d already left and then come back again, but either way, he’s back in Chicago with Cassie, and Ryan gets closer to his deadline, and Pete stops going easy on him, asking him what’s wrong, sending him home early. Ginger sticks around, but she stops asking to see the kids every free moment, and she stops asking Brendon if he’s doing okay every time she calls—his answer is always the same, anyway.

He feels stalled, and abandoned, and he hurts _everywhere_ and he’s not dealing with this but he’s hiding it well. He’s hiding it so he doesn’t have to deal with it, and he screams when he gets the house to himself for a moment, because the music couldn’t drown out the silence, and screaming until he cries makes him fucking _feel better_ for a split fucking second. The kids stop asking for things as much, like they can tell he’s not in the best place right now, and it kills Brendon that he’s doing this to _them,_ as well, and he hates himself that much more. But he doesn’t know how to fix it, or how to be the person that they need him to be, and he’s trying—trying so fucking hard—to give them what they need, and help them get through this, and move on, but he can’t do it. He’s failing them as a parent and he just keeps letting himself slip up, lets his daughter’s eyes fill with worry she shouldn’t understand because every time she asks to play, he’s too tired, or he has too much work.

Jake stops asking altogether, and his silence almost kills Brendon more. Seven-year-olds shouldn’t ever be that quiet.

He just can’t. He can’t do _anything._ He feels like he’s not even himself anymore, just some sort of spectator to his own life, watching as he just keeps fucking up, repeating the same things over and over, expecting things to change on their own because he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to change them himself. He can’t. He can’t be a parent, he can’t be an employee, he can’t be a widower and he can’t be Brendon fucking Urie anymore because Brendon Urie was buried in that damn empty casket they shoved into the ground. He’s just a fucking ghost.

Two weeks pass before anything changes, and he’s alone in the house, and he has some sort of episode—he’s been refusing to give them a name, ignoring them like maybe they aren’t real that way. He thinks they’re panic attacks, but what the fuck does he know? He doesn’t know anything anymore. He doesn’t even think anymore.

It’s just—he’s staring in the mirror in the bathroom, and there are two toothbrushes in the cup next to the sink, and he should throw the other one out before it gets moldy or something, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what the rules are, what he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t know if it’s _okay_ to throw Spencer’s toothbrush out, or if it’s healthy to keep it there, and for how long? And when does he start cleaning out his part of the closet? And how long before he has to rotate the mattress, because one side starts to dip too far?

What is he supposed to do with Spencer’s mail? What is he supposed to do with _any_ of this? No one’s fucking told him, no one’s coming to invade his house and take what they think is theirs, like some sort of inheritance. What the hell does Brendon do with Spencer’s watch—the nice one he got for their wedding from his father, the one with his name engraved on it that never needs batteries and never needs to be adjusted? Can he wear it? Are Spencer’s things his now, as next of kin, or should he box it up and give it to Jake when he’s older? Will Jake even give a shit about it by then? Will Jake even _remember_ Spencer?

He sure as hell can’t sell the watch, anyway. He’s not heartless enough for that, but he’s not giving it away either, because it’s not like they’re rolling in dough, trying to raise two kids on a government salary and whatever the hell Pete decides to pay him that week.

Should he just give up and create a fucking shrine, piling all Spencer’s old shit in it, like some sort of twisted sacrifice to his spirit. He’ll be forced to look at it every day, remember exactly how much he lost. Maybe it’ll drive him crazy, or maybe it’ll just sit there, collecting dust over the years, until they move or run out of room or something else happens—maybe the fucking house burns down, he doesn’t know.

Maybe Brendon dies in some horrible accident, and the kids are taken away by the State, and whoever the hell cleans out his house sees it as nothing more than a pile of shit, and they trash it. Maybe Brendon decides he doesn’t want to _deal_ with this shit anymore, and just goes, gets the fuck out, maybe he just—

The high-pitched shatter of the mirror in the bathroom when he hits it snaps him out of his head, and he feels like he’s just been dunked in freezing water, because he can’t be doing this, can’t be freaking out like this and—is that blood? Where the hell did blood come from and—oh. Oh, _shit._ No, no, no, no. He can’t be doing this, this isn’t good, this is Step 1 of many steps to getting committed, he can’t—shit. He needs to stop this. He needs to pull himself together, the kids don’t need to lose both their parents in the same year, they can’t—they can’t—shit.

He pulls out a small shard of mirror from his palm, wincing, and looks down into the sink. There’s mirror glass everywhere, reflecting back odd angles of the room like a sort of collage, mixed in with the occasional blood stain. “Fucking hell,” he says to himself, sighs, and wraps his palm in a wad of toilet paper. It’s not quite enough, because he’s a stupid asshole and he sliced his hand open pretty damn well.

He’s careful as he picks up the shards of mirror and shoves them in the trash bin before he turns on the water and lets it wash away the blood smears. There’s nothing to be done about the mirror itself—he’s going to have to get it replaced, make a run to Home Depot and look up a few things about installing permanent mirrors. For now, he gets a few sheets of construction paper from Emily’s pad and tapes it to the non-broken edges around the web of cracks and sharp edges. He can use the other mirror panel for now, even though it’s on Spencer’s side of the bathroom, and get the new mirror sometime over the weekend. He can drop the kids at Ginger’s and use the time to get the rest of this mess cleaned up before the kids wander in here and get hurt.

Then he grabs some bandages and antiseptic out of the cabinet and wanders into the kitchen so he can hold his palm under cool water for awhile, try to slow the bleeding. It’s not too bad, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt to get a couple stitches, if he’d had the time for that, or been willing to sacrifice his dignity. Instead he puts a few too many butterfly bandages on it, wraps it up tightly and firmly, and comes up with a cover story—trying to change the lightbulb in the bathroom only to lose his balance and catch his fall on the mirror. Ginger will see right through it, but she won’t say anything so long as he assures her that he’s okay.

And the funny thing is, he thinks that’s almost true. The adrenaline woke him up a bit, upped the stakes, and things aren’t so damn foggy anymore. He needs to stop freaking the fuck out and get through this, for the kids. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to do this, anyway—he’s been raising them on his own for the better part of two years. He’s doing okay, not perfect but okay, and so long as he stops working himself into a panic every time he starts thinking about Spencer, he can do this.

He knows he can do this. He married a Marine, for god’s sake, he’s stronger than this and he knows it.

So he takes a couple deep breaths, heads out to pick up the kids from Ginger’s, and leaves all his hang-ups to disappear into the cracks in the tiling on the bathroom floor. He’s okay—or, he will be, anyway.

He will be.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Brendon’s too busy for surprises, okay? Someone gave Jake Pixie Sticks at school and he’s been running around the house like the fucking energizer bunny for the past half hour, demanding “Pick-A-Sticks” and of course, when Brendon tried to calm him down by telling him it’s actually _Pixie_ Sticks, he insisted that Brendon was wrong, so wrong, and started screaming about the red ones while he skipped about three steps at the bottom of the stairs.

Not to mention Emily, who’s tired and cranky but can’t possibly sleep with Jake bouncing off the walls. She’s still kind of upset that she couldn’t go outside today, what with the torrential downpour. Brendon hadn’t remembered her rain boots either, because he didn’t _know_ it was going to rain today, despite Emily’s firm belief that Brendon knows everything. One would think, what with Brendon’s drenched state himself, that she might believe it was an honest mistake proven by the fact that Brendon forgot his own umbrella this morning. And Pete thought it would be funny to send him across the street to see if that office had any spare pens lying around. Because some moron decided to go through and replace all the complimentary pens in the supply office, only they forgot to actually get new ones, and honestly, Brendon’s life sucks.

Which is why he’s not in any fucking mood to do anything other than wrestle his children into bed—Emily’s crying now, that’s going to be at least a half hour of story time—and get some damn sleep before he’s rudely awoken at the crack of dawn for Saturday morning cartoons and pancakes. Brendon doesn’t even want pancakes anymore. That’s how pissed off he is.

So, you know, someone knocking at the door is not something he’s going to pay any mind too, because the fucking solicitors had been popping by at the weirdest hours. He’s sure if he ignores it long enough, it’ll go away. And Jake’s screaming too loudly to notice, and Emily’s still sitting on the floor next to the stairs, sniffling and whining about rain as she rubs at her sleepy eyes. He doesn’t have time for anyone else right now. Damn Spencer for leaving him a single parent. Just—damn it.

Brendon steps into the kitchen for a moment to fill up two cups with water for the kids’ nightstands, then he’ll probably promise Jake to buy Pixie Sticks tomorrow (he won’t) and promise Emily it won’t rain tomorrow (it probably will). He’ll deal with them then, in daylight hours, when he’s not so impossibly exhausted that he can’t even think right.

He comes back into the foyer, mouth open and ready to make concessions and promises he can’t keep, right as the front door opens. Brendon’s confused—really fucking confused, because no one is supposed to open his door without his express permission—and he’s halfway to sweeping Jake and Emily each up in an arm and sprinting up the stairs, but the person standing in the doorway isn’t a gunman or a psychotic escaped convict, it’s—

“DADDY!” Jake screams, the first to make any sort of movement, and he stomps down the stairs and pounds into a pair of legs, still dressed in camouflage BDUs. Emily only hesitates a moment longer before she’s echoing her brother and practically falling over herself as she wrestles away from Brendon’s side, stumbling against Jake and finding her own small section of legs and waist to grab on to.

Spencer’s smiling, in that happy-sad way that makes it seem like he’s about to cry, and he crouches down—slowly and carefully, like he’s injured—and wraps his arms around Jake and Emily, kissing a million times into their hair and on their foreheads, opening his mouth to speak but never getting the words out. Emily’s still crying, though it’s gigglier this time, and Jake’s not crying but he’s teary-eyed and clinging and babbling about choco-chip pancakes and glitter pictures and everything he’s ever told Spencer in an email.

Brendon can’t fucking breathe.

Then, it’s like someone flipped a switch, and Emily is smiling and pulling away only to grab Spencer’s hand, trying feebly to pull him along and saying stuff about showing him pictures or the new doll she got. Jake follows suit, tries to pull him in the opposite direction, toward the fridge with more than two-month-old pancakes sitting in them, wrapped in tin foil by tiny, messy hands. Brendon didn’t have the heart to tell him that saving pancakes for that long didn’t really work. But he just figured that once Jake forgot about them, he could throw them away, and honestly, it’s not like Spencer was going to come home to eat them, anyway, because Spencer was—

Spencer was supposed to be—

Fuck.

Spencer finally raises his head from Jake and Emily’s joint effort to pull him _somewhere_ , eyes still crinkled in the corners from his grin and shiny eyes from unshed tears, and he looks up at Brendon with that blue, such a fucking gorgeous blue, god, how had Brendon forgotten? There’s no beard, no trace of stubble, and his hair is too short and his entire frame is so much bigger than Brendon remembered, and there’s a tiny scar next to his left eye that Brendon can see from across the foyer, and it never used to be there. There’s something that looks like a cane on the floor next to Spencer, and he’s favoring his right leg, fighting against Emily and Jake’s pulling. There’s a hardness in his eyes that Brendon’s never seen before, either.

But fuck. It’s _Spencer._ It’s really, actually him. _Alive._ Standing right there, surrounded by their kids, staring straight at Brendon like there had never been thousands of miles, oceans and sand and long months abroad, visits from solemn military men in full dress with their hats in their hands. It’s too fucking _much._

Brendon turns around so fast that he almost falls twirling to the ground, but he just keeps moving, keeps momentum, and he can’t hear Emily and Jake pleading “Come _see_ , Daddy” and he can’t hear the half-formed words Spencer manages, the first time he’s spoken this entire night. Brendon hasn’t heard Spencer’s voice in person in over two years.

He wraps cool fingers around the handle for the sliding glass door, steps out onto the back porch and the crisp Nevada air that never gets quite cold enough, even in winter. He can’t hold himself up much longer than a few seconds, just enough to shut the door behind him and collapse down onto the steps, his head falling to between his knees in one fluid movement. Brendon breathes and tries to keep from throwing up.

Alright. He can do this. He can reason his way through this until he’s calm and he’s okay and it’s all just—fuck. Okay. Calm, right. Yes. Facts. Spencer is alive. Spencer is standing in the front hall of their home, and he is walking (sort of) and breathing and in mostly one piece, and he is alive, holy shit, holy _shit._ Alive. _Alive._ Those fucking military bastards and their damn shaky information, and how is he alive, it’s only—They told him Spencer was dead, they told him they didn’t expect—

Fucking hell.

Brendon cups his hands around his mouth and tries to stop hyperventilating.

He really doesn’t think he’s handling this all that well, not at all. No chance in hell. Alive. _Christ._

For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t even know how badly he’s shaking until there’s a steady arm pressing down over his shoulders, pulling him sideways towards warmth and comfort, and Brendon didn’t think it had been that long, there’s no way the kids are—

“I put the kids down,” Spencer says softly, speaking out toward their lawn, eyes looking a little watery in the moonlight. It’s probably Brendon’s imagination. “Or tried to, at least. I think our son takes after you. We’re going to have to keep him away from sugar and caffeine for the rest of his life.”

And Christ—that Spencer still knows him this well, knows them all this well, even after so many years and everything that’s happened and all that’s changed, it’s just— Brendon laughs, bubbling up from deep in his gut and tearing through his throat. He leans harder against Spencer and presses his face toward his chest and reaches an arm over and around, pulling himself closer even though he knows it’s clingy. He never really catches the point where the giggles turned into gut-wrenching sobs, but, well…

“Bren,” Spencer says, barely a whisper, and warms a spot of Brendon’s back with broad palms, rubbing in little circles with just enough pressure. And then, just like that, they’re kissing, even though Brendon can never quite remember when he needed to kiss Spencer, but he does, he needed to be sooner. He needs to always, pressing Spencer against the chilled wood of the patio, working cold fingers into strands of hair, dragging stubble against skin Brendon doesn’t remember ever being so smooth. But fuck, Spencer’s lips, and his fucking _mouth,_ and the tiny, imperceptible sounds he makes that Brendon can still hear, drawn out of him with invisible force. Brendon wonders if Spencer always made those sounds, like tiny whimpers or sighs, or if this is something new. Brendon doesn’t remember.

It’s been too fucking long.

Brendon’s hands clench, one pulling Spencer’s hair, guiding his mouth against Brendon’s, and the other is twisted in the rough fabric of his BDUs, somewhere around the shoulder. He’s not going to let go if it kills him.

Brendon doesn’t actually manage to stop kissing Spencer, just manages to slow down enough to breathe until he tucks his face against Spencer’s neck and kisses lightly there, instead. He doesn’t really remember feeling this light-headed before. It’s probably a good thing that he stopped to breathe. Probably.

They lie there, panting with their chests rising and falling against each other, pressed into hard wood worn with rain and wind and time, clutching at anything they can reach. Brendon won’t move. He’s never going to move again.

“You know, there’s this thing called a bed.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, it’s been kind of a damn long while since I’ve had a real one to sleep in, and as I remember, our bed is a bit softer than, say, a patch of cold, hard ground in the corner of a stone building with your wrists and ankles shackled while you bleed into the dirt.”

Brendon winces, pulls away a little bit and then freezes. He doesn’t like thinking about Spencer like that, doesn’t like knowing that things were really that bad, sometimes. Brendon knows that isn’t even bad. He doesn’t know if he wants to know the worst of it, yet. Spencer sighs. “Sorry,” he says, and Brendon squeaks against his neck, because no, Spencer doesn’t have _anything_ to apologize for. Spencer is fucking _alive,_ and that’s enough. He pulls away, manages to stand with strength he wasn’t sure he had, and pulls Spencer up and immediately through the door, beelining for the stairs on instinctually quiet feet.

Spencer limps, and he’s slow even with the cane (where the hell did he get one of those?) but keeps up alright. Brendon doesn’t stop until he’s stripped of his jeans and jacket, left with just a threadbare T-shirt and his boxers, feeling ridiculously self-conscious as he crawls into his half of the bed and watches Spencer looking around, almost in awe. His fingers keep touching things like he didn’t remember they were there. He probably didn’t.

Spencer gets undressed a little more slowly, not trying to be seductive or anything. It was really more reticent. Brendon doesn’t even have to ask how long he’s probably spent wearing those BDUs, it’s probably weird for him to have normal clothes again. But then Brendon doesn’t know—Well, he doesn’t know anything.

Spencer changes his T-shirt and his boxers, digging around in the closet like he’s almost forgotten where everything was kept. Brendon hasn’t touched it, even though his part of the closet is getting a little packed. He’d been worried, after they’d told him—after he’d thought Spencer wasn’t coming back… He’d been worried that everything that was Spencer’s in the house would suddenly migrate away, or get overtaken with something from the three of them still there, everything disappearing until it was all just gone and the only thing they had was a memory. Brendon didn’t want that happening.

Spencer leaves the lights on and sits down gingerly on his side of the bed, like he’s not sure he’s welcome there anymore, and Brendon is irrationally furious that there would be any other option, any reason why Spencer doesn’t belong here. He practically vaults over to Spencer, pulling him toward the middle until they work out a comfortable position with Spencer sitting against the headboard and Brendon curled in his lap, limbs sprawling over each other, Brendon’s head on Spencer’s stomach. He doesn’t care how pathetic it might seem. He doesn’t care much about anything anymore, except that Spencer is here. He’s here and he’s not in a fucking coffin.

“Bren, why—”

“Shh,” Brendon says shakily, working his fingers under the hem of Spencer’s T-shirt to rest just above his hip, on the side of his stomach. Brendon remembers when there used to be adorable little love handles there, and every time Brendon would poke at them, Spencer would blush. Now, there’s nothing but firm muscle and taut skin. Brendon tries not to think about how much he misses the softness.

Spencer sighs, irked but not to the point that he’d do anything about it, and rests a palm on the back of Brendon’s neck, his thumb rubbing circles to work out spots of tension. They breathe in stretching silence, Brendon’s thoughts finally slowing and fitting themselves together into sentences that mean more than just a frantic burst of panic and happiness and uncertainty. He’s spent so long in a state of terror that he still doesn’t quite know what “okay” feels like.

It surprises the both of them when Brendon asks what happened.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they— Why you’re home, why we didn’t get any emails from you for the past—hell, in forever, why there were servicemen on the doorstep with long faces telling me you were—”

“Oh, Christ. They didn’t— Did they really tell you that—”

Brendon’s voice is so small, so pitiful and scared that he’s surprised Spencer even hears it. “We had a funeral weeks ago.”

“Fuck.” Spencer pulls Brendon up, fitting his head into the crook between Spencer’s shoulder and his neck, holding him so tightly that Brendon wouldn’t be able to breathe if he’d been trying to. As it is, he’s pretty sure all the air left the room awhile ago, and he shuts his eyes tight against the sting of tears coming back. They never really left.

Brendon really wishes he could calm the fuck down and just be happy that Spencer’s here, so they could both just breathe and be normal. But there’s just so much inside Brendon’s head right now, he doesn’t know what to do with it all. He’s sad, and scared, and upset, and confused. So if clinging to Spencer and crying himself dry makes the hurricane in his head a little less frantic, then that’s how it’s going to be.

Spencer had been lilting soft words of comfort, but that’s stopped now and they rest in relative silence, the occasional sniffle from Brendon hardly there at all. He doesn’t like thinking, especially since it won’t just let him _be_ , right now. Right here, with Spencer, not thinking but just being.

“How long do I have you for?” Brendon doesn’t want to know the answer, and he winces right after the words are out. But he grips Spencer’s side a little firmer and waits anxiously, tension rippling through him, for the answer. Maybe, with whatever’s going on with Spencer’s leg, they’ll give him awhile to recover, a year or—

“I—For as long as you want. I’m home. I—They let me go, I’m done.”

Brendon’s mouth goes dry. “What?” This doesn’t make any sense, the military doesn’t just let you go, they keep you and bleed you dry and if Spencer’s really out a whole year and a half before—there must be something wrong. He’s hurt terribly, and fuck, what could be bad enough to get him out but not show immediately, what— “Oh my god, you’re dying. Fuck, I didn’t—Fuck, Spence, why didn’t you say anything, I—I—”

“Bren, no, hey, calm down. I’m not dying. I’m not—” Spencer leans down and kisses Brendon until he stills, pliant in Spencer’s lap. Brendon’s just a little bit too shocked by it all to really respond, or do anything but lie in a helpless puddle in Spencer’s lap, looking up at him, waiting. “I’m not dying,” he repeats, slowly, and his eyes warm a little when he looks down at Brendon. “Just—Those months that I didn’t write you? Some pretty bad shit went down during that time. It’s not—I never got the worst of it, not compared to some of the guys, but they fucked up my hip pretty bad, so...”

Brendon can speak in hardly more than a whisper, high-pitched and weak when it sounds. “Fucked up how?”

“It—I don’t know the medical jargon, but I guess I cracked some bone? It’s okay, and the field medic said it’d be better with a few rounds of PT, maybe some minor surgery, but I just won’t be able to get around as fast anymore. They’re not going to ship me back out just so I can limp my way into a firefight and get shot, Bren.”

“I—” Brendon closes his mouth, licks his lips, and goes to try again, but the words never come.

“And—” Spencer starts, hesitantly, like he’s not sure he wants to tell Brendon whatever it is he’s thinking. “I— Look, I don’t want to freak you out, but things were bad there for a little while, okay? And I just— I’m not going to be a hundred percent right away, okay? Being back here has helped, but there’s still— Just—” Spencer huffs out a frustrated breath and drags a hand through his hair. “If I space out, or— I mean, I haven’t, but sometimes guys get flashbacks, or nightmares, or just— Whatever, and I don’t want you to—”

“Spence,” Brendon interjects quietly.

“I mean it, Bren. I need some time to—”

Brendon pulls himself closer to Spencer, tighter, more, and whispers “You’re alive.”

“adjus— What?”

“You’re alive,” Brendon repeats, turning his face in toward Spencer’s stomach, his nose pressing into the worn T-shirt. “You— God,” Brendon laughs brittlely, “God, none of it matters because _you’re alive._ ”

“I—” Spencer lets out a long breath and curls his arms a little more tightly around Brendon. “Yeah,” he laughs, then a little more softly “yeah.”

Brendon doesn’t even say anything, just lets his bottom lip quiver until he feels like he’s falling into Spencer, and he pretends he’s not crying anymore even though he’s not fooling anyone. Spencer cards rough fingers through his hair and waits for Brendon to ride through this latest wave of shock.

They stay there until Brendon feels like he can form some sort of coherent thought again, something other than _alive, alive, alive_. “We need to—” His thoughts coalesce, and then he’s pushing himself up and looking around with his eyes wild, searching for “Your parents!” he yells, “We have to, oh my god, they don’t—”

Spencer shushes him, curls strong fingers around the nape of Brendon’s neck. “In the morning.”

“But—” Brendon argues, even though he feels himself melting back against Spencer. “They think you’re—” his voice cracks, and he swallows. “God, I thought you were—”

“I know,” Spencer mumbles sadly, and pulls Brendon’s head toward him to kiss his forehead. “I know, but it’s late, and if we call, they’re going to come over, and I just—” He stops himself, ducks his head like he’s blushing, but Brendon hasn’t seen Spencer blush since high school. The service got under his skin, changed him, and he’s still Spencer, but he’s different now. Brendon’s not sure whether he misses the old version or not. Right now, he doesn’t give a damn, because the not-dead version is just fine, thanks. “I want tonight for us,” he finishes, and then Brendon’s pulling back and looking Spencer in the eyes, trying to ignore the blurriness around the edges, the way the lights are dim because one of the bulbs burned out two months ago, and Brendon could only find an amber bulb to replace it.

That’s when Brendon finally cracks, falling forward and not stopping until his lips crash against Spencer’s, his hands scrabbling for skin, for some part of Spencer, because god, _god,_ he’d almost lost this. He’d almost— “Spence, Spencer, Spence,” he chants desperately, in between frantic kisses and fumbling hands. He thinks he might still be crying, but at this point, he’s so far beyond caring.

“I need—” He starts, hands fluttering “I want— God, I—”

Spencer shuts him up with a well-timed kiss, mumbles “Okay, okay,” against his lips. “I know, alright? I know.” Then Spencer’s palms are framing his hips, laying him down in the middle of the mattress, stripping their clothes off without ever losing contact. Brendon whimpers, because it’s been so long, and he just— He can’t think, he _can’t think,_ because Spencer is alive, he’s here, he’s here and he’s fucking _alive._

“Yeah,” Spencer breathes against his skin, and maybe Brendon’s been thinking aloud, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, because— “Oh, god,” Brendon gasps, as Spencer’s warm, rough palm circles around Brendon’s cock, and he can’t think, but he needs—he can’t— “Not this,” he manages, though his brain is telling him he’s being stupid, he’s being so fucking stupid, but— “I’m going to— I want—I want _you,_ I need—”

“Okay,” Spencer says, rushed, and presses his mouth hurriedly against Brendon’s to stop him from rambling. “Okay,” he whispers again, and Brendon feels a shiver run up and down his spine. Spencer’s hand leaves his cock and reaches over Brendon to get to the bedside table, and Brendon bites down hard on his lip and tries not to cry at the lost contact, because— Fuck, _Spencer._ Alive. Here. _Alive_.

He spaces out for a moment, his brain stuck in a loop, and then he comes jolting back to himself when there’s a cold, slick finger pressing into him, slow and smooth, and— “Oh, god,” he croaks out intelligibly, and tries to tell himself that starting to cry again right about now would be a pretty bad idea.

Something hitches in his throat, and he cuts off a sharp breath when Spencer starts pressing in with two fingers, and then everything just stops and slows like molasses. “Bren? Bren, hey,” Spencer says, like he’s worried, and _god,_ Brendon wants to just laugh at this entire ridiculous situation, because _Spencer_ is worried about _him._ This morning, Spencer was fucking _dead,_ and now he’s _not_ and he’s _here_ and Brendon’s pretty sure anything Spencer does is fine, it’s fucking _golden,_ because it means Spencer is _not dead._ Jesus fucking Christ. “Go,” he says breathlessly, “Just—Spence, god, _more._ Just go.”

He thinks he hears Spencer laugh, amused, but that thought doesn’t have time to register because then there are two fingers pushing in and curling, and— “Motherfucking—” he whacks his hand around until it catches in Spencer’s hair, and he tightens his grip just enough for Spencer to feel it, and says through gritted teeth “This is gonna be over _real quick_ if you don’t get on with it.”

That time, Spencer does laugh, and he shifts to press a kiss to Brendon’s jaw, and his fingers shift and Brendon is seriously one second away from yelping when Spencer’s fingers slip out and then press back in, this time with three, and it burns but Brendon groans and shifts his hips down, pushing against Spencer, because _god,_ it’s Spencer.

Spencer’s forehead falls down onto Brendon’s stomach then, Brendon’s fingers still twined in his hair, and he says “God, Bren,” in that same breathless voice that Brendon’s been speaking in lately. Brendon moves his fingers in soothing circles over Spencer’s scalp, tries to concentrate on that and not on Spencer’s fingers moving inside him, because if he does that, he’s going to come, and he’s kind of hoping to make this last for at least a decade or two.

Then there’s a sudden emptiness again, and Spencer shifts around above him, taking so damn long with the stupid freaking condom—when did they start using those again?—that Brendon whines pathetically and presses his hips upward. Spencer mumbles something to him, but Brendon doesn’t really hear, and then there warm pressure is back, and Spencer slides into him, and it’s _so fucking much_ and Brendon cries out and bites down so hard on his lip that it bleeds. He fumbles his hand downward so he can maybe stop himself from coming before Spencer’s even started moving, and just as he remembers how to breathe, Spencer shifts, pulls back a little, and then thrusts back in. Brendon moans so loud that he starts having a mini-freak-out about whether or not they locked the door, because the kids are across the hall, and— _oh, god._

“Fuck, fuck, _Brendon,”_ Spencer says, just as brokenly as Brendon feels right now. Brendon wraps his legs around Spencer’s back, drawing him forward, and Spencer collapses onto him and presses millions of kisses to Brendon’s neck, jaw, temple, cheek, nose, lips. Brendon whines and Spencer starts moving again, guiding them with a broad, warm hand on Brendon’s hip, and all it takes is a slow, deep thrust of Spencer inside him, filling him up, and a breath that breaks over the _d_ in Brendon’s name, and Brendon feels a sharp tingle shoot through his entire body before he’s spilling warm and sticky between them, Spencer following in seconds, stilling himself deep inside and then just falling forward, covering Brendon with his heat.

Brendon thinks he loses consciousness for a little while, and he only comes back to share a hiss with Spencer when he finally pulls out. Spencer moves around him, takes care of the technicalities, wiping at Brendon’s stomach with a T-shirt that he chucks across the room. Then Brendon is grabbing at Spencer, pulling him up so Spencer’s draped over him as they both listen to their breathing slow. He hears it when Spencer slips into sleep, breaths drawing themselves out, even and relaxed.

Brendon cards lazy, liquid fingers through Spencer’s hair, again and again, and listens to Spencer sleep, sturdy and sound. He can feel the exhaustion ebbing away at him, so much fear and worry and sleeplessness pressing down on his chest after years. Spencer is alive. By some sort of miracle, he’s back home, safe and sound, and he’s not in a fucking _body bag,_ or blown into pieces scattered in the sand of some place Brendon probably can’t even pronounce.

And this means that—it means everything. It means Jake and Emily have their Dad again, and even if he’s going to have to pay for therapy when someone else dies and Emily becomes convinced they’re going to come back just like Spencer, and he doesn’t _care._ He doesn’t care because Spencer is here, and he’s alive, and he still loves Brendon and—

God.

He really thought that, didn’t he? He remembers, now, realizes he’d been thinking that all along, since Spencer shipped out. That maybe he’d come back, and there’d be this strange distance between them, like they were strangers. That Spencer would come back and not want to be a father anymore, or not want to be a husband anymore, or not want to be anything anymore—he knows the damn statistics.

This whole time, he’d been worried that maybe Spencer would come back only to break him again, show up by some miracle, make things whole simply by being there, and then disappear of his own free will. But he’s here, right now, and there’s no distance between them, and he’s not—he seems—he’s Spencer. He’s different, and he’s harsher, and there are probably parts of him that Brendon will never fully understand, but he’s still Spencer. He’s still the man Brendon married, and he’s still Jake and Emily’s father, and he _wants_ to be here.

He still wants this—wants them.

Jesus.

Brendon laughs, quietly, and scratches lightly behind Spencer’s ear. He’s here, alive, and he wants this. They’re a fucking _family_ again. A few weeks ago, Brendon buried an empty casket, and his son carried around a folded flag like a safety blanket, and his daughter tried to mail her favorite stuffed animal to “The Place Where Daddy Fights The Bad People” by shoving it in the mailbox and waiting for the mail truck.

And now Spencer is here, and it’s nothing short of a damn miracle, and if Brendon didn’t hate his parents so damn much for leaving him, he’d rub this in their faces—show them exactly what a miracle looks like, and that they’re the only ones that give a damn about what sort of junk Spencer has in his pants.

Because this is what love is. This is what a family is, and he’s thanking all his lucky stars that he has this back, and whole, because losing that had been too damn much from the start.

Just before Brendon closes his eyes, the lights still on and the blankets puddled on the floor, he whispers out a solemn prayer—the first time he’s prayed since he was sixteen—and says, just above a whisper, “Don’t ever take him away from me again, you sick, twisted _bastard_.”

Then he lets his eyes slide shut, and his fingers still in Spencer’s hair—one word fading like an echo in his mind as he lets the night take him: _alive, alive, alive._

 

_**Fin.** _

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title taken from my favorite Shakespeare quote:  
> "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  
> Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,  
> To the last syllable of recorded time;  
> And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
> The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!  
> Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,  
> That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,  
> And then is heard no more. It is a tale  
> Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
> Signifying nothing."
> 
> 2\. Ryan reads [this](http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww124.html) William Wordsworth poem at the funeral.
> 
> 3\. Inspired (sort of) by the song "Travelin' Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks.
> 
> 4\. Credit for [this photograph](http://usmclife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Before.jpg) goes to Aaron Thompson, the photographer. My heart also goes out to the family of late Marine Staff Sgt. Marc Golczynski, whose 8-year-old son Christian is featured in this photo.
> 
> 5\. Un-beta'd. Any mistakes are my own. This includes any mistakes made due to my limited knowledge of the military and military funerals—research can only get you so far, and cannot measure up to real-life experiences.
> 
> 6\. This is now accompanied by a set of codas, to be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15540). I did not include them as sequels to this work because I want this work to stand on its own; the codas are simply scenes from this universe that I've written, but aren't pertinent to this story.


End file.
